


my love is the killing kind

by zanthetran



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Assassin AU, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, assassin!yaz, bed sharing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26585983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanthetran/pseuds/zanthetran
Summary: Yaz is a bad person.She knows that. She gets it. There’s no morally right reason to murder people in cold blood.Except, the pay is amazing, and she’s good at it. Like, really good at it. And technically the only people she kills are like, actual bad people (enslaving planets, genocide, etc).oryaz is an assassin. the doctor is her mark. we all know that can't end well.the assassin (ass) au.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 48
Kudos: 126





	1. you're my kill of the night

**Author's Note:**

> so like, expect some descriptions of y’know, being an assassin n killing people. not anything like saw levels but like something you’d see on HBO, safe for tv.
> 
> also there's fuckin killer cover art done by @wretcheddyke so like yall, check it out cause it’s now my phone background and I have not stopped screaming about it for approx a week. link: zanthetran.tumblr.com/post/629901847770120192
> 
> fic title: the killing kind by marianas trench
> 
> ch title: kill of the night by gin wigmore

Yaz is a bad person.

She knows that. She gets it. There’s no morally right reason to murder people in cold blood.

Except, the pay is amazing, and she’s good at it. Like, _really_ good at it. And technically the only people she kills are like, _actual_ bad people (enslaving planets, genocide, etc).

She rounds the corner of another long white hallway and immediately punches the closest guard in the face, knocking him back to the wall. With her left hand she grabs a small throwing knife from her thigh and lets it soar through the air, hitting the other guard in the leg. He stumbles back and falls to the ground, frantically trying to pull the knife out of his knee as the poison now courses through his blood. Yaz pulls the other guard back by the hair and punches him in the face again, effectively knocking him out and dropping him to the floor. She slowly walks to the man gripping his bleeding leg and quickly pulls the knife out, wiping it on his pants as his mouth starts to foam.

“Don’t follow me,” she growls, walking off down the corridor.

There aren’t even any guards in his room — cocky bastard. Enslave an entire race and you get quite a big head about you.

He’s sleeping when she does it (it’s easiest when they’re sleeping). It’s a quick cut, a picture of confirmation after he stops moving, and then she’s walking back out the same way she came in. She doesn’t even hear alarm bells until she’s leaving the facility, her ship idling nearby.

Her mum calls when she takes off and she puts the call through to her voicemail. She doesn’t like talking to her mum when she’s still got blood on her hands (figuratively and literally, at the current moment). She navigates the steering wheel with her knee while she drives off planet and scrubs at her hands with the package of wet wipes she keeps in the ship.

She gets the confirmation message on the way to the pickup location — meaning the old warehouse right outside the city on New Earth.

(Side note, she hates that name. _New Earth_ , like they’d just decided to move Earth to a different planet one day and didn’t completely destroy their own in the process.)

The warehouse is empty when she arrives and she shoves her hands into her pockets as she approaches the table. There’s a small duffle bag that Yaz checks first, counting the money in there before zipping it back up. Next to it lays a manilla folder — a new hit. She sighs.

“I said I didn’t want another job!” she yells, her voice echoing in the large room.

No one answers — of course no one answers, she’s _alone._ She flips open the envelope and twelve pictures fall out, all of various white men ranging in age from sorta young to really old. Yaz, confused, looks down at the file, the title reading “MISSION THETA”.

She rolls her eyes. The theatrics really aren’t necessary, they could just give her this information without making it feel like she’s a secret agent or something. The information is brief and not really helpful; male, changes his face with each regeneration, flies around in a blue police box called the tardis, usually travels with companions. It gives a few details into the places he seems to frequent in time and space and that’s it.

So, she’ll need to track this guy down, then.

She wouldn’t normally consider it with how much work it’s gonna take to find him, but then she turns the page and the number in the offer is far too much for her to be able to turn it down. She’d be able to get her family set up for _life._ She’d be able to get _herself_ set up for life.

She takes the file and the duffel and drives back to her flat in the middle of the city, parking her ship two blocks over at the yard and walking the rest of the way. Some guy whistles as she passes buy and she flashes the large knife strapped to her thigh. He doesn’t whistle after that.

She does a bit of research when she gets back in her flat and locks the door, putting the metal bar across. Tardis is easy enough to find information about — people have the weirdest hobbies, and some of them include researching extensive information about other species that genuinely could not give a single fuck about the human race.

That race just so happens to be the Time Lords.

A bunch of pompous bastards, Yaz thinks as she reads into their history (though, with the way information can get spread nowadays, it’d be a miracle if any of it’s true). Apparently they’ve developed a sort of time travel in a ship that can transform it’s outside to blend in, and lucky for her, those ships have a specific energy pattern that she’ll be able to follow and use to track down the Doctor.

She makes a list of things she’ll need to acquire and hides the duffel bag of cash in the ceiling vent of her bathroom, standing on her tip toes on the toilet to reach. She’ll deposit it tomorrow when she’s out, then send a transfer to her mum as soon as possible.

* * *

It should be a lot harder to track this energy pattern. Like, if it was Yaz, she’d do _something_ to cover that. It’s just sloppy work not to.

She reads the energy all over the universe, through time and space and finally gets a good hit on a planet a few years in the future. She’s in her ship and taking off within minutes, and arrives in the right time and planet a few minutes later.

She parks and checks her pockets before jumping out, shutting the door of her ship quietly. Gravel crunches underneath her feet as she approaches the building where she hears voices talking in hushed whispers.

“I’m just sayin’ I’m gonna need a lunch break soon! We’ve been running a lot today,” a mans voice says.

“Yes, Graham, I know that, thank you. I can’t very well ask the murderous robots to feed us lunch, though,” a woman’s voice replies.

Another man’s voice speaks this time. He sounds quite a bit younger than the first man. “Are they _really_ murderous? I didn’t see them kill —“

“Most definitely murderous. Turned that man to dust,” the woman says.

Yaz pulls the large knife from her thigh holster as she approaches the whispering voices, quiet as a mouse.

It’s basically muscle memory when she rounds the corner and pulls the closest person back by the arm, knife going to their throat. It just so happens to be the woman who gasps a little when her body is pulled flush against Yaz, the blade of her knife pressed hard against her skin.

“Right, so which of you is the Doctor?” Yaz asks, motioning between the two men.

“Doctor?” the older man asks.

Yaz rolls her eyes. “I tracked his ship here, it’s got to be one of you. So which is it before I…y’know.” She nods to the knife at the woman’s throat.

“Neither of us, mate. We’re not the Doctor.”

Yaz changes her position so she can hold the woman still, knife still pressed against her throat. She digs around in her back pocket for a few seconds before pulling out the twelve pictures, holding them up and dropping them after the two men get a good look at each one.

“No? None of these were either of you?” She gets to the last picture of a white haired old guy and lets it drop to the ground.

“Mate, I’m from Sheffield. Planet Earth, you know that one?” the younger guy asks, hands held up placatingly in front of him.

“When?” Yaz asks, narrowing her eyes.

“2020. Was born in ’98. Can you let our friend go?”

Yaz looks to the woman held up against her, knife pressed to her throat. She swallows and her jaw works but she doesn’t say anything, just looks at the two men with wide eyes.

“Where’s he from?” she nods to the older man.

“Same place, same time,” the younger guy says.

“Born in ’60, love,” the older man adds. “Got an ID on me, if you want.” He slowly reaches into his back pocket when Yaz nods and he pulls out a leather wallet, slipping a card out and holding it out for Yaz to see.

Yaz studies the ID — Graham O’Brien, born 1960 — and their earnest faces for a minute before she drops the knife and pushes the woman forward, the younger guy reaching out and steadying her by the arms. She hears her mumble, “Thanks Ryan,” before she turns around to face Yaz, chin lifting. Yaz puts her knife back in the thigh holster and starts picking up the pictures.

“Sorry bout that, thought I tracked his location to you guys. Must be my equipment.”

“Why you lookin’ for the Doctor?” the younger guy — Ryan, she’s pretty sure — asks, eyeing her skeptically.

“Can’t say, official business,” Yaz lies. The woman narrows her eyes slightly and Yaz stands, putting the pictures back in her pocket.

“What kind of official business?” Graham asks.

Yaz shrugs and sticks her hands into her jacket pockets. “Would you believe me if I said I’m here to kill him?” She gives a disarming smile, one that says _this is totally a joke_.

The woman narrows her eyes even more and Yaz feels them wander her form, probably taking in the knife on her thigh, the throwing knives on the other, the obvious boot sheath with knife handle sticking up. She probably can’t see the other weapons Yaz carries but the three she _can_ see label Yaz as dangerous — not one to fuck with.

There’s a tense silence for a long moment, then the older man laughs awkwardly. “Right, like an assassin.”

“Exactly like an assassin,” Yaz says.

“What, someone hire you to kill this Doctor guy and then you get paid for it?” Ryan asks.

“Sort of the definition of assassin.”

Graham’s face drops. “Wait, you’re _really_ an assassin?”

“Graham, look how many knives she’s got —“

“Who hired you?” The woman’s voice is even and controlled and not entirely what she was expecting.

Yaz looks over at her and makes eye contact, then shrugs. “Dunno. Probably wouldn’t say if I did.” She takes a step back. “Right, well, it’s been fun, sorry bout the knife to your throat, but I’ve gotta get going.”

“Do you want to help us?” The woman asks before she can turn and leave.

Yaz looks at her curiously. “What are you doing?”

Graham looks over at the blonde nervously. “Are you sure this is a good —“

“We’re defeatin’ an army of evil robots,” Ryan says.

Yaz looks back at her ship, weighing her options. It’s not like this Doctor dude won’t still be around when she gets done helping these humans. She concedes. “Alright. What’s your name, by the way?”

The three of them look at each other for a second, then the woman says, “Doctor Smith.”

Yaz raises a brow. “A doctor? Small world,” she says, looking between the three humans. “Doctor of what?”

Doctor Smith waves her hand. “Quite a few things. Lets say science, love science.”

“A doctor of science.”

“You’re catchin’ on. How good are you with electrical wiring?” Doctor Smith asks, moving towards the front of the building.

“Pretty good,” Yaz answers, following behind. Ryan and Graham follow a few feet behind Yaz.

“Great! At least someone here can rewire properly.” She shoots a glare over her shoulder at Ryan.

“I’m sorry, I’ve already apologized for it, get over it already,” Ryan says defensively.

They crouch down next to an open door and Doctor Smith pulls a metal tube from her pocket, pointing it at the doorway then bringing it to her face like she’s reading something.

“Right, so. Good news and bad news. What would you like first?”

“Bad news,” Ryan says.

“Bad news is there’s quite a few killer robots in there.”

“What’s the good news?” Yaz asks.

“Good news is if we get hit by a laser it won’t hurt too much because your entire body will be turned to ash instantly.”

“That doesn’t sound like much good news, Doc!” Graham hisses.

“I know,” Doctor Smith makes a face. “But, I sort of have a plan. I’m thinking maybe we can train their attention to one side and then we can sneak past! We just need a big enough distraction.”

Yaz stands up, pulls her pistol from the shoulder harness under her jacket and checks the ammo. “How many, you say?” she asks.

“You can’t go in there, there’s at least fifteen —“

Yaz almost rolls her eyes. Fifteen robots, right. She takes a deep breath before rounding the doorway, firing off two shots immediately and knocking out the camera’s on two of the robots. She moves farther into the room and takes two more out, then a third one a second later. They don’t even start shooting until here are 7 of them left, and by that time Yaz has already pulled their attention to the other end of the room and set herself up to take three out in quick succession. The last 4 give it their all but nothing touches Yaz as she doges to the side and takes each of them out with practiced skill. She’s left in the middle of a room of destroyed robots in under two minutes and when she turns around the three humans are standing in the doorway, mouths agape.

“That was so bloody cool,” Ryan says in awe.

Yaz puts the pistol back in the harness and nods towards the door at the other end of the room. Doctor Smith takes the lead and sticks her head around the doorway to check the hall outside. She turns back to them. “Right, Ryan and Graham, you two need to go to the other end of the facility and shut down the robots on that server. We’ll do the one over here.”

Ryan starts to say something but Doctor Smith shoots him a look that Yaz can’t quite decipher. He shuts his mouth and follows Graham down the hall silently, looking over his shoulder at them twice before rounding the corner. Doctor Smith takes off the other way, boots squeaking loud on the tile.

“God, you’re so _loud,_ ” Yaz whispers.

“I’m sorry, it’s my boots. Just got a new pair,” she says. Yaz stops her and digs around in the inside of her jacket, pulling out a small bottle with powder in it. She dumps a little on the floor and points to it.

“Step in that.”

Doctor Smith looks down at the bottle, then the pile of powder on the floor. “What is that?” she asks warily.

“Baby powder,” Yaz says, putting the bottle back in her jacket. “What, you think I’m just gonna poison you for no reason?” At the blonde’s continued silence Yaz rolls her eyes and says, “I’m an assassin but you’re not my hit. Step in it.”

Doctor Smith looks down at the powder, then steps in it, grinding the soles of her boots down. They don’t squeak after that.

Yaz gets two more of the laser shooting robots with her throwing knives almost as soon as they round a corner, before either could fire off a shot. The blades pierce through the eye of the cameras like a bullseye on both and Yaz bends over them to remove the knives before slipping them back in the holster on her thigh. Doctor Smith steps over the robots and makes her way to the door at the end of the hallway. She turns the handle and slowly pushes the door open, hot air hitting them immediately.

The electrical room is huge. Like, warehouse huge. Like bigger on the inside, definitely. Large stacks of what Yaz assumes are servers sit row after row after row as far as she can see and a large computer sits against the wall closest to them. Doctor Smith immediately goes to the computer and starts typing.

“So you also know computers then?” Yaz asks, walking to the computer and looking over her shoulder at what she’s doing.

“Dabbled here and there,” she replies distractedly. Yaz turns from her and starts inspecting the nearest tower, looking at all the tangled cords and following them on the ground.

It’s not even a conscious thought when she throws herself against the blonde, pushing her out of the way of the shot from the rogue robot standing between two rows, blaster pointed straight at them. Yaz lifts her right arm and lets out two shots right into the camera, shattering the screen and lens. The robot falls to the floor, lights blinking out all over it’s body.

Yaz staggers back a few steps and her hand reaches out to grip the console. When the pain comes, it’s familiar. Something Yaz has felt before and that’s sort of comforting considering Doctor Smith had said the shots would turn your body into ash, and Yaz isn’t ash yet.

She looks down at where blood is starting to soak through her shirt and she doesn’t even hear Doctor Smith yelling her name as she falls to her knees, legs finally giving out. Her head swims and she looks up, hazel eyes frantically jumping around her body. Yaz looks down and sees the hands pressing into her side covered in blood — _oh god, was Yaz not fast enough? Is she hurt?_

Yaz reaches out and mumbles, “You’re bleeding.”

Her ears ring and she can’t hear the response, it wouldn’t have registered anyways. Through slightly blurred vision she watches Doctor Smith rip off the bottom half of her dark blue shirt and ball it up, putting it in Yaz’s hand. She lets out a sharp cry when Doctor Smith presses her hand hard to the wound.

“Keep it there, okay?” Her voice is shaky and panicked in a way Yaz hasn’t heard in the short time she’s been with her.

Yaz nods. She needs to find safety, a place she can patch up. She needs out of here and back to her ship that’s waiting outside. She needs to get the fuck off of this planet and finish her job.

She tries lifting herself up but her arm shakes far too much and black swims around the edges of her vision and she falls back down.

Doctor Smith is back to the computer now, typing frantically and glancing nervously at Yaz every couple of seconds. She says something that Yaz can’t decipher in her fogged state and then she’s standing over top of her, hand holding her cheek. Her skin is cold or Yaz is hot, but either way she closes her eyes at the touch.

“Hey, I need you to stay awake for me, okay?” Her voice is panicked but all Yaz feels is calm. The pain washes over her in waves and she cracks a small smile.

In a way, she deserves this. Even if she doesn’t ever find this Doctor person, she deserves to pay for everything she’s done before now.

“Guess this is my penance,” she croaks, vision finally going completely black.

She wakes up several times. The first time she feels a slight bouncing and realizes she’s being carried — by Ryan, no doubt. She feels big hands hold her body against a strong chest and they bounce slightly with each step, the pain shooting through her like a hot knife. She groans and Ryan says, “Doctor, I think she’s awake.”

Yaz mumbles, “Try anythin’ and I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Noted, mate,” Ryan gruffs, breathless.

She gets bumped particularly hard and passes out soon after.

When she wakes up for good, she’s in a hospital bed. Or, what could be considered a hospital bed. She doesn’t think it’s a real hospital and her suspicions are confirmed when she hears muffled voices arguing just outside the closed door.

“— came here to kill —“

“She didn’t kill me today!”

“She doesn’t know you’re —“

“And she _won’t_. How could she know?”

“Other than the fact that we’re in a tardis? She’s gonna figure that out pretty soon, also big blue police box?”

“I’ll...fix the circuit. I’ll tell her it’s a different tardis, not the Doctor’s.”

“And if she doesn’t believe you? If she puts it all together and murders you in cold blood?”

There’s a long silence, then the door opens. Yaz shuts her eyes and pretends to be sleeping as footsteps approach the side of her bed. The urge to leap off and go into full survival mode itches at her fingertips but she keeps still, face slack. Her heart beats hard in her chest and thank god they don’t have her hooked up to some kind of heart rate machine cause that would be a dead giveaway.

 _She’s gonna kill you first, Yaz,_ her brain whispers. _She’s gonna kill you first so you’ll stop tracking her_ — _the Doctor_.

God, she’s been so fucking stupid. Not even taking a chance to consider the Doctor being a woman. Her tracker had lead her right to her mark and she didn’t even pull her head out of her ass long enough to notice.

The footsteps get closer and Yaz is out of the bed in an instant, the pain fogging her head for a second before she can see clearly again. She takes a step away and reaches up instinctively for her gun but the holster is gone (actually, her entire _shirt_ is gone, but she doesn’t think about that). Her hand drops to her hip but her knife is gone, as are the small throwing knives on her other thigh. She’s not wearing shoes so her boot knife is out of the question and she’s obviously not wearing a jacket so her grenades and any type of poison are too (though, what she could do with poison _now_ that the Doctor already knows she’s going to kill her, she couldn’t say).

The Doctor looks startled, like she hadn’t been expecting Yaz to be awake yet. She stops in her tracks and looks down to Yaz’s hands that clench into fists on instinct, though she sways slightly on her feet. The pain from her side radiates through her body and it’s difficult to keep steady when her head swims.

The Doctor speaks first. “I should check that.” She nods towards Yaz’s side where a large white bandage sits taped to her skin. A red dot marks the center of the gauze, slowly growing with each moment she stands there. “Looks like you’ve popped a stitch. I can probably fix it, though.”

Neither of them move. Yaz’s side hurts like a bitch and all she really wants is to lay down and sleep for another day (or month). She clenches her jaw and tries to weigh her options in her pain muddled mind.

The Doctor sighs. “Yaz, you’re gonna make it worse. I’d hate for you to bleed out on my floor.”

Yaz stays silent, eyes flicking between the Doctor and the door. She might be able to make it if she runs, but she can’t guarantee she won’t pass out from the pain.

The Doctor sounds exasperated now as she watches Yaz try and form an exit plan like a cornered animal. “Yaz, I’m not gonna hurt you but if you keep standin’ you’re gonna hurt yourself. Just let me change the bandage.”

Her head is swimming and she doesn’t feel steady on her feet and she knows the Doctor is right. She doesn’t have a choice.

Yaz slowly makes her way around the bed, keeping herself facing the Doctor the entire time, before she sits down on the edge. She makes a list of everything in the room that can be used as a weapon as the Doctor turns to a cabinet on the wall and starts pulling out supplies. She walks quickly to the side of the bed and puts the supplies down next to Yaz, sitting on a stool on wheels. She rolls herself between Yaz’s legs and reaches for the gauze taped to her belly.

Her hands freeze barely a few centimeters from touching her — so close Yaz can feel the cold radiating off them. The Doctor looks up at her, hazel eyes studying her face. “Can I touch you?”

Yaz nods, looking down at her hands. “Yeah,” she croaks, only noticing now how _thirsty_ she is.

The Doctor’s hands move forward and peel at the tape and Yaz sucks in a breath as cold fingertips touch her skin, leaving goosebumps in their path.

“Sorry, my hands are always cold,” the Doctor mumbles, pulling back the gauze and setting it off to the side. She pours some antiseptic on a paper towel and starts to wipe at the bit of blood on and around the wound, her other hand coming to rest on her thigh. Yaz hisses through her teeth when the Doctor goes right over the stitched wound and she mumbles out another apology. The Doctor rubs a numbing cream around the area and wipes her hand on the blanket hanging off the bed.

A thousand thoughts and questions run through her mind but before she can ask any of them the Doctor starts talking quietly as she threads the needle. “Practiced under the best surgeon in the galaxy,” she says, glancing up at Yaz’s face for barely a second before looking back down at her side. “Well I say practiced, what I mean is I was the scrub nurse and I stepped in to finish the procedure when he died right there during surgery. Were a man then, too.”

“So all those men in the pictures I showed were you?” Yaz asks, unable to help her curiosity.

The Doctor nods, piercing the needle through her skin expertly. “At one point or another.”

There’s a long silence. Yaz feels the thread pull at her skin.

“Why are you helping me?”

The Doctor glances up at her face for a moment before looking back down at her work. “When I see someone that needs help I never refuse,” she says, and it sounds practiced, like she’s said that before and meant it every time.

“Even if you know I’m still gonna kill you later?” Yaz asks, because they both need to be on the same page for this — killing the Doctor is her mission and she _has_ to complete it, no matter what. Failure is not an option — not when you work for the people Yaz does.

“That was the plan,” the Doctor says briskly. “Just make it quick, don’t wanna stay too long, y’know.” She ties the thread off and snips it with a small pair of scissors. “And let me drop the boys off first — they’re hopeless at flying the tardis. Tried teaching Ryan once, ended up at the bottom of the ocean, forty years too early. He has worse aim than I do.” She picks up a fresh square of gauze and holds it against the wound. “Hold this,” she mumbles, and Yaz does. The Doctor tapes it down on all four sides then starts collecting the used supplies on the bed.

She throws it all in the trash and washes her hands in the sink while Yaz picks up her shirt from the side table and pulls it on. “Gonna drop the boys off at home. I’ll drop you whenever you need. Let me know when you’re ready,” she says, wiping her hands on a towel on the counter. She gets to the large white doors before turning back around, eyes studying Yaz for a long moment.

“Weapons are on that table,” she says, nodding towards the part of the room behind Yaz.

Yaz turns her head and sure enough, her weapons and holsters sit neatly on the table, waiting to be put back on. When she turns back around the Doctor is gone and Yaz is left alone in the quiet, sterile room.

She puts everything on by muscle memory alone, strapping the knives back to her left thigh and the knife to her right hip and the holster around her shoulders and the various other small weapons she carries on her person at all times. The Doctor must’ve done a thorough check when she’d ended up here.

It’s not hard to find the console room and Ryan and Graham are already gone when she gets there. The Doctor leans over the console, the arms of her coat rolled up to her elbows as she’s almost elbow deep in the console. Yellow light shines on her face from the hole where her arm is reaching and she doesn’t even notice Yaz until she clears her throat loudly.

The Doctor jumps back from the console, looking startled. “Oh, Yaz, sorry. Was just doing a last minute repair. Better late than never.”

Yaz doesn’t realize she’s made the decision until the words are out of her mouth. “I’m not gonna kill you.”

If she had looked startled before, now she looks downright shocked now. “Why not?” she asks.

Yaz furrows her brows. “Do you _want_ me to kill you?”

“Well, not particularly, no, but you’d seemed set on it,” the Doctor says.

Yaz looks around at the spacious console room — at the large glowing crystals surrounding the console and the Doctor, leaning against it — and lets out a short, regretful laugh (because this is probably going to be something that she will regret later).

“I dunno,” she finally admits with a shrug, because she really doesn’t. She _should_ kill her — it would definitely be in her best interest to just get it over with while the Doctor is practically willing, but she can’t (read: _won’t_ ).

Yaz moves towards the doors, boots echoing on the metal grate floor. She’s about to reach for the handle when the Doctor speaks up from behind her.

“Do you wanna travel with us?” she asks. Yaz stops and turns back to her. “Me and the boys, I mean.”

Yaz furrows her brows. That’s that last thing she expected from the Doctor right now. Five minutes ago she was ready for Yaz to assassinate her and now she’s asking Yaz to travel with them?

“Travel with you?”

The Doctor nods, smile forming on her face. “Yeah! Usually the tardis takes us places that need help but sometimes we get free time to see something cool. Went to Woodstock last week — Graham loved it.”

“Just because I decided not to kill you now doesn’t mean I couldn’t — or won’t,” Yaz points out.

The Doctor shrugs. “I know. Hope you won’t, but still.”

Yaz studies her face — she’s completely sincere, asking Yaz to travel with them even though Yaz might actually kill her.

“Why?”

She shrugs again. “Could always do with a third travel companion.” Her face brightens suddenly. “We could call ourselves _the fam._ ”

“We’re not calling ourselves that,” Yaz deadpans before opening the door and stepping out onto the crowded street of her city.

“I’ll be back in two days, right here!” the Doctor yells to her back as Yaz shuts the door.

She turns around and watches the blue police box whir, then disappear. People walk through the spot where it was just sitting, completely unaware there was a ship there a few seconds previous. Yaz passes the Yard on her way back to her flat two blocks away and unexpectedly, her ship sits there like it had always been there, parked perfectly.

She gets back into her flat in one piece without having to flash a weapon and leans her back against the front door, breathing the first real deep breath since she’d found out the Doctor’s current identity.

She’s fucked, isn’t she?


	2. there's no residue of torturer inside your eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a trip and a mystery and the doctor eats sand (and rocks)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what is UP yall guess the posting day will be mondays since I have no self control. hope u guys enjoy <3
> 
> ch title from: crazy=genius by panic! at the disco

She decides probably 13 separate times that she’s gonna kill the Doctor when she comes to pick her up in two days, and each time she makes the decision she hears the Doctor’s soft voice in her head saying _Yaz, I’m not gonna hurt you._

Because like it or not, Yaz would’ve died on that floor had the Doctor not disabled the robots from her end and dragged her back towards the entrance when Ryan and Graham found them. She would’ve died and she didn’t because the Doctor apparently helps everyone who needs it, even if they’re actively looking to murder her.

(She’s a far better person than Yaz is, that’s for bloody sure.)

Yaz stands from the bench when she hears the same choked whir from the other day and the tardis slowly materializes on the sidewalk, a few feet to the left and out of the way of the walking traffic on the pavement. A few seconds later the front doors open slightly and Ryan sticks his head out, eyes scanning the crowd until they land on Yaz coming towards him.

He doesn’t move from the doorway when she approaches and his eyes are suspicious, brows furrowed. “You gonna kill her?” he asks without preamble.

Yaz sees Graham approach behind him, asking, “Is that Yaz? Is she here to kill the Doc?”

Yaz rolls her eyes.

“Let her in, she’s gonna be part of the team!” the Doctor yells from farther inside the tardis.

“Yeah, it won’t be a team long if she murders you as soon as she steps in the door,” Ryan mumbles but steps back anyways, letting Yaz in before closing the door behind her.

The inside is as big as she’d remembered — bigger, even. A small set of raised geometric platforms sits to one side and she’s pretty sure it wasn’t there two days ago.

“Never agreed to be part of a team,” Yaz says when she takes it all in again — the huge glowing crystals, the buttons and blinking lights on the console, the ceiling that’s a black so deep it looks like it stretches forever, the Doctor grinning as she leans against the console, arms crossed and watching her closely.

The Doctor makes a face. “Sure ya did! Team tardis, the _fam_ ,” she says excitedly, moving her hands with the word _fam._ “Right, fam. Rules!”

Ryan groans from the platforms where he sits. “Didn’t you go over these last week? And you change them like, every other day.”

“We’ve got a new person on the ship, Ryan. Don’t be rude. Besides, the first rule is that I’m allowed to change the rules whenever I want cause I’m the boss.”

“Think if anyone’s the boss it’s Graham.”

“Oi!” The Doctor points at him sternly. “I’ll drop you off home if you keep talkin’ like that. Second rule is don’t talk back.”

“Thought that were the third rule,” Ryan mumbles under his breath.

“That was last week,” Graham says. He’s got a lawn chair set out a few feet from Ryan with a sandwich in his hand. “And three weeks ago, I reckon.”

The Doctor glares at the boys. “I’m not making any more rules. You lot can run free on alien planets.”

“That’s what _you_ do, mate.”

“Are you guys always like this?” Yaz asks. All three heads turn from their argument, like they had forgotten Yaz was even there.

Ryan shrugs. “Yeah, mostly,” he says, then turns to the Doctor. “Where we goin’ today?”

“Oh!” The Doctor jumps and moves back to the console, grinning wide as she presses buttons and flips switches. “Something easy today. Kept getting a signal in the middle of the night and figured we’d go there — small planet, shouldn’t be too bad.”

* * *

They end up in the middle of an empty desert, the sand a bright white and skies a light pink.

“Doc?”

“Yes, Graham?”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

The Doctor pulls out that tube thing from a few days ago and points it in one direction, then spins in the opposite direction, then points it close to Yaz who takes a step to the side (she isn’t sure what that thing is and she’s not taking the chance at getting shot again). The Doctor holds it up to her face, then points just left of Yaz. “Probably this way.”

The Doctor starts off that way, boots sinking slightly in the sand and long grey coat billowing out behind her in the wind. Yaz turns to Ryan. “Probably?”

Ryan shrugs and starts off behind the Doctor. “You’ll get used to that, mate.”

“Can’t we just take the tardis?” Graham mumbles behind Yaz.

“No we can’t, Graham. We’re already here — if I move the tardis closer we’ll meet ourselves in the present and I don’t really think I want that to happen right now.”

They walk for an hour and a half. An hour and a half under the hot suns that warm the sand under her boots. Graham sweats beside her, the Doctor’s horned rimmed sunglasses perched on his nose as he squints against the brightness of the sand. The Doctor stops a few feed ahead of them at the top of the hill and raises her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun, then she points, excited grin forming on her face.

“There! I told you there was a village,” she says smugly.

“Yeah, almost two hours from the tardis. How we gettin’ back? We gonna walk again?” Ryan quips but the Doctor has already started down the hill and ignores him. Her coat is draped over her shoulders like a towel at the pool and it flaps in the air as she runs.

Ryan follows her as Yaz and Graham crest the top of the hill. Graham stops and flaps his shirt, trying to get some cool air on him.

“She always like that?”

“Running head first into danger? Every day,” Graham deadpans and starts off after them.

Yaz’s knife bumps against her hips as she walks and her gun digs into her ribs and she hasn’t taken her jacket off even though it’s like forty degrees and she’s sweating through her shirt.

They arrive at the town a few minutes later and the Doctor immediately walks up to a woman standing behind a wooden stall on the side of the road leading into the village. She’s got light purple skin and large green eyes and she looks startled when the Doctor strides up and asks, “Excuse me, have you seen anything weird goin’ on? Strange? Maybe even unusual?”

The woman looks at her like she’s gone mad (and so does Yaz — _who asks someone that?_ ) but looks around before waving her closer. The Doctor leans in and listens carefully as the woman whispers in her ear.

The Doctor pulls away slightly. “Have they been found?” she asks.

The woman whispers in her ear again and the Doctor nods and straightens back up. “Brilliant, thank you.” She grins and turns to the fam. “Right, fam. Men and woman have been disappearing from the town and coming back changed, whatever that means. Who wants to go explorin’?”

Ryan raises his hand, Yaz and Graham keep their hands down. The Doctor points to Ryan and grins. “Love the enthusiasm, Ryan, ten points.”

Ryan looks chuffed as he glances at Yaz and Graham, smile on his face, then follows behind the Doctor who is now talking to a man selling what looks like some type of meat sizzling over a fire. His blue skin is darker on the tops of his arms and bare shoulders and he looks Yaz over as she passes, scowl set on his face. She looks him in the eyes and pulls her jacket back, large knife now visible. He looks back at the sizzling meat.

Yaz follows behind Graham and Ryan as the Doctor talks to a woman selling what looks like beaded keychains who points them in a direction down the road, gesturing with her hands for turns. Yaz walks slowly, hand close to her hip, ready to pull the knife (or gun, whichever) in a second if any one of the people bustling around the small market decide to have it out with the three humans and Time Lord.

Stalls line the small road (still sand) and small huts sit behind them, probably belonging to the stall owners, Yaz guesses. Some of them stare and Yaz sees a small pink boy point excitedly as they pass, then his mother pulls him back into the house with a firm grip on his arm.

They find the tree first. The Doctor stops at the end of a road where a tree stands at the opposite side — well, the word _tree_ is used _very_ loosely considering it doesn’t have any branches or leaves and mostly looks like it’s been hit by lightning a couple dozen times. Carvings sit in the wood covering the bark, blending together at some points where they overlap. The Doctor kneels and picks up some sand at the base of the tree, putting it in her mouth.

Yaz looks to Ryan and he nods. “Yeah, get used to that too.”

Yaz does a quick sweep of her eyes around them, looking for anything suspicious, but they seem to be alone next to this tree. She kneels down next to the Doctor and reaches forward, her fingers tracing a carving. _Vim’ain._ The one next to it reads _Starcens._

“What do they mean?” Ryan asks behind them.

“They’re names. Hundreds of names,” the Doctor says. “But why —“

The screaming is loud and they can hear it from the other end of the road. Yaz is on her feet in an instant, her hand on the handle of her blade as she searches for the culprit behind that noise. The Doctor starts off in a run _towards_ it and Yaz wants to hit her or beat her with her own arms or something (who the fuck runs _towards_ the blood curdling scream?).

They end up at a small hut at the end of the road. The Doctor knocks twice before just walking in with a disarming grin, words already spilling from her mouth. “Hi, hate to bother you but it sounds like you need a bit of help,” she says to the two aliens now sitting startled in their chairs.

A bed sits in front of them and strapped to it is a boy, no older than Yaz, his wrists and ankles bound by thick straps as he thrashes against them. Tears streak down his face, skin burned and boiled and peeling like he’d been sprayed with acid. His eyes remain closed as he lets out another blood curdling scream.

Ryan looks a bit pale. Graham looks like he’s two seconds from unstrapping the thick restraints. Yaz takes in the room in a calculated manner, not saying a word. The Doctor continues on for them all.

“Right, can I take a look?” she asks, pulling out that metal device again.

Ryan looks over at Yaz, catching her studying the device in the Doctor’s hands. “It’s a sonic screwdriver,” he says.

“A sonic screwdriver?” The file hadn’t mentioned weapons — especially _sonic_ weapons.

“Yeah like, think it’s a scanner or something? Never seen her use it as a screwdriver before. She built it a while back — said she’d lost her last one.”

Yaz watches the Doctor move the sonic screwdriver from the boys head to his feet, then look at the side of the device like she’s reading something. Maybe it _is_ a scanner.

Yaz turns her attention to the house — closing the door and checking the street (bare). When she turns back around the Doctor is asking the parents (Yaz assumes) question after question and taking in all the information, tongue stuck between her teeth as she looks at them seriously. Graham still stands stiff, pained look on his face as the boy lets out another scream and thrashes in his bonds. Ryan at least doesn’t look as pale and stands next to her, his back against the wall and hands in his pockets.

“Is it always like this?” Yaz asks, nodding towards the boy.

Ryan shrugs and tilts his head side to side. “Sometimes they’re in bad shape. We just try to help so no more end up like that,” he says a little sadly.

There’s a small tug on the left side of her jacket and Yaz looks down to find a small boy pulling on the material, looking up at Yaz. He motions her to kneel down and Yaz looks at Ryan who gives another shrug.

She kneels down and the boy touches her arm and asks, “Are you going to fix my brother?”

Yaz falters for a moment, not really sure what exactly to say. The boy looks scared, mostly, and he flinches when his brother lets out another pained scream. Yaz covers his hand with her own and says, “Yeah, we’re gonna try our best.”

The boy nods seriously, then holds out his other hand, palm up. A small yellow beaded rope (a lot like those keychain type things that woman was selling on the street) sits there and he holds it out to her. Yaz looks down at his little green hand, then back up to his face. He moves his palm closer to her. “For good luck,” he says.

Yaz takes it from him and he makes a tying motion near her boot. She looks at the beaded rope and sees it split on each end to tie to something and so she leans forward and ties it through the lace holes on her boot. He nods, satisfied, then exits out the front door. She watches him pass the window and disappear from view, then she stands back up. Ryan looks at her boot and raises an eyebrow.

“Didn’t think an assassin would be good with kids.”

Yaz shrugs. “Got a younger sister.”

“Right! Fam, we’ve got a plan. Or _I_ have a plan. You lot were too busy talking amongst yourselves.”

“How’s this lad connected to that tree?” Graham asks, eyes still trained on the boy on the bed, now letting out short grunts from his throat.

“Apparently young, healthy people have been disappearin’ and when they come back they’re changed, like our friend Trin over there. Hukve told me they’re too violent to be let back into the population so they’re usually killed but Nikran — the purple one — wasn’t gonna let that happen so they’ve had him like this ever since,” she says all in one breath. “So, any questions?”

“Yeah, how’s that connected to the tree?” Graham repeats.

“Before they disappear their name is carved onto the tree — or really it just _shows up_ there. No one knows when or how but without fail, if your name shows up on the tree then you disappear within a day."

“So what's the plan?” Ryan asks.

The Doctor shrugs. “I say we wait it out, it’s gotta happen sometime soon since it’s been about two weeks since the last one was taken and they seem to happen about every fortnight.”

“You want us to camp here?” Graham looks around the hut. “Have you seen the outside? Sand, Doctor.”

“They’ve offered us an empty hut, apparently the occupants left soon after their daughter came back changed. It’ll be great! Like a sleepover!” She looks excitedly at each of them, eyes landing on Yaz’s as she gives a soft smile.

“Do we have a choice?” Ryan asks.

“Nope!”

* * *

Yaz takes watch that night even though Hukve and Nikran told her repeatedly she didn’t need to (but they’d also said “ _the men won’t come when there are visitors_ " and Yaz doesn't know what _that_ means, and she doesn't really want to find out). She sets up a small fire in the sand a bit away from the hut and sits on the bare sand cross legged as she sharpens her knife with a quick hand. She works methodically and carefully, not wanting to damage the knife and inspecting anything that even looks remotely like a crack.

The door to the hut opens and the Doctor steps out, feet bare as she steps through the sand towards Yaz. Yaz continues on, not looking up from her work when the Doctor sits next to her, legs crossed underneath her and pants pulled up to her knees. She grabs a stick and starts poking at the bright red embers and the end of the stick catching on fire. She quickly sticks it in the sand, then back in the fire. That cycle repeats like twenty times until Yaz finally asks, “Why are you out here? Thought you'd be asleep in there.”

The Doctor shrugs and shoves the stick in the sand. It sizzles and she pulls it out, inspecting the charred end, then sticks it back in the fire. “Weren’t too keen on sharin' a bed with Graham. Ryan insisted on sleeping on the floor even though I told him I don't sleep.”

“You don't sleep?” It shouldn't come as a surprise considering she literally watched her eat sand and she carries around a screwdriver, and yet.

“Nah, not a lot, anyways,” the Doctor says, sticking the stick back in the sand. This time she uses the end to draw a shape. “Did y'always wanna be an assassin?"

Yaz lets out a bark of laughter then realizes she's serious, the light from the flames dancing over the side of her face. “No,” she finally says, because _obviously._ “No, wanted to be a police officer, actually. Was gonna get trainin' for it and everything.”

The Doctor whistles. “A police officer, wow. How did you end up on the other end, then?”

Yaz studies her face, eyes narrowing. “Why?” she asks, because there's gotta be a catch or something — a reason why the Doctor didn't leave her out here alone to keep watch.

The Doctor shrugs and it looks like she's trying her hardest to be nonchalant, like she doesn't actually care but Yaz sees the curiosity in her eyes, the fire behind them that isn't a reflection of the fire in front of them.

She gives in, against the clawing inside her chest that screams she shouldn't trust the Doctor, even now — even when she's given no indication of wanting to hurt Yaz, even though she literally saved her life. Even though she's out here, shoeless and in the sand, keeping watch with Yaz (okay, so she's out here, she's just not watching for anything).

“Money, I s'pose. Isn't that always it?” She lets out a harsh laugh then continues despite herself. “You probably already know about the End Day — the last straw for the planet before it completely shut down, totally unusable. Anyways, ended up on New Earth and jobs were not easy to come by, especially for my parents. Mostly started it just so they didn't have to live in that piss poor excuse for a flat with two other families.”

“So you send the money back home?” the Doctor asks, voice quiet like she's trying not to scare Yaz off.

 _It's gonna take a lot more than a few barely personal questions_ , Yaz thinks.

“Yeah, most of it. Save a bit for myself to pay my way, service my ship, get the stuff I need.” She shrugs. “Just wanted a better life for my sister. She was too young to remember the End Day.”

There's a long pause. Yaz watches the Doctor draw a circle with some lines then scribble it out and draw another with different lines. “Think you'd still do it if you didn't need the money?” she asks.

Yaz slides the knife back into the sheath and straps it back to her pants. The weight is comforting against the side of her thigh and she wipes her hands on the material covering them. She picks a stick out of the fire and breaks the hot end off in the coals, then draws a square. “Maybe, dunno. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.”

“Why not?”

Yaz looks over at her, a bit annoyed at the way the Doctor keeps digging with her questions. “Do you think about how _you'd_ be different if a certain thing hadn't happened?” she challenges.

The Doctor's mouth shuts abruptly, then she purses her lips and looks back down at the sand. “Right, sorry,” she says quietly.

Yaz throws her stick in and watches it catch aflame, then watches the Doctor toss her own stick in. The red and orange flames flicker over her face and shine bright in hazel eyes and the fire behind shines even brighter. Yaz recognizes it — the same fire behind her own eyes when she looks at her reflection.

She looks back to the fire.

* * *

The next day is very uneventful. The Doctor drags them back into the market, talking away over her shoulder as she leads them through. “— the _best_ fried flarn in the galaxy, I swear.”

“What's a flarn?” Ryan asks.

“Sort of like a fish, but if a fish had legs and a much bigger and more advanced brain and consciousness.”

“Sounds horrifying, thanks Doc,” Graham deadpans.

Yaz and Ryan end up eating the meat the blue skinned man cooks slowly over the fire, Graham pulls a sandwich out of his jacket which concerns Yaz greatly because that's been in there for a _while,_ and the Doctor eats a handful of rocks. Like, literal rocks.

“They're not _actual_ rocks, they're different than the ones you're used to on Earth,” she says, biting down on one with an audible _crunch_.

“What's the difference between these rocks and ours?” Ryan asks.

“These are crunchier,” the Doctor says happily, putting the entire handful into her mouth and biting down. Ryan winces and makes a face as he walks next to her down the road, Yaz and Graham following after.

The tree doesn't get another name that night and both Ryan and Graham insist on taking watch since Yaz (and the Doctor) did it the night before. Yaz expects the Doctor to go sit with Ryan and Graham near the fire (since apparently she doesn’t sleep) but when they finally get back to the small hut she pulls her coat off and toes off her boots, tossing the coat over a small wooden chair and kicking the boots towards the wall.

Yaz is exhausted — more than twenty four hours awake and she's practically dead on her feet as she toes off her boots, catching sight of the flash of red beads still tied to the top.

“Right! So, are you a top or a bottom?” the Doctor asks, no indication that she's upset by Yaz snapping at her the night before.

Yaz stops, her hands still on the thigh holster with her throwing knives as she furrows her brows at the Doctor, heart suddenly beating hard against her chest for no reason in particular. “What?”

The Doctor motions towards the single bed in the room. “Are you a top or a bottom? I don't have a preference, me. Well, starfish in the middle, but that's sort of rude with company and —“

“Left,” Yaz interrupts after realization washes over her — she's asking about the side of the bed she prefers. “I usually take the left side.”

The Doctor grins. “Brilliant. Usually go for the right, me.”

“Thought you just said you don't have a preference.”

“That was a lie.”

Yaz puts her weapons on the small table beside the bed but keeps the large knife under her pillow. “You do that often?”

The Doctor slides into the bed after shedding her undershirt, braces, and bra. “Don't think so — or maybe it's the opposite, maybe I always lie. Can't remember.”

“That's reassuring.”

“Is it?” she asks sincerely.

Yaz pulls off the long sleeve shirt, leaving her in a camisole. She removes her bra and lays it next to her weapons on the bedside table. “Not in the slightest,” she says, sliding into the bed next to the Doctor. It’s _a lot_ smaller than it looked before (or the Doctor is hogging the bed) and Yaz feels the cool skin of the Doctor's arm pressed against her own. It's silent in the room but Yaz can faintly hear the sound of Graham and Ryan talking outside the hut, the fire crackling over their hushed words.

“Are you asleep yet?” the Doctor whispers after a few minutes.

Yaz debates not answering. Instead she says, “No.”

“Must be exhausted, how long has it been?”

“36 hours, 14 minutes.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” And Yaz feels every single minute of it. Her body feels like it's floating on the mattress even though it's probably the worst thing she's ever slept on (and she's slept on concrete before). Sleep tugs at the edges of her body, begging to be let in.

Yaz sighs.

“Why did you ask me to travel with you?” she asks because _bloody hell_ she's curious and confused and a little uneasy — who the fuck asks the assassin sent to _kill you_ to travel with you and your mates through time and space, saving lives or whatever.

She thinks the Doctor turns her head to look at her but Yaz doesn't open her eyes to check.

“You were alone,” the Doctor says quietly — simply, like it explains _anything_.

Yaz opens her eyes then and looks over at her, studying her face in the pale moonlight. Hazel eyes look up at her and _fuck_ if Yaz doesn't trust her completely despite the screaming voice inside her telling her not to.

She gives a small, awkward chuckle to cut the tension. “What if I had a crew waitin' in the ship? Which, thanks for bringing back, by the way.”

The Doctor makes a face. “Was nothin’,” she says, then adds, “And I'm glad you didn't have a crew waitin' or they'd have been proper confused when I got on board.”

Yaz turns her head back to face the ceiling. The quiet stretches on so long she's sure the Doctor is asleep until she asks, “So why did you decide to come?”

Yaz chews on the inside of her cheek. Her eyelids feel heavy and her limbs feel heavier. Everything in her is begging her to finally go to sleep and she doesn’t have the energy to fight the part of her that wants her to tell the Doctor her life story.

“Couldn't get it out of my head — you saving me, I mean. Even though you knew the entire time I was planning to kill you.” Yaz chuckles darkly. “I wouldn't have done that.”

“Good thing I'm indestructible, then, so you wouldn’t have to,” the Doctor says, cheeky lilt to her voice.

“Today you whined about a splinter for three hours.”

“It was _really_ deep, Yaz. Like, in the muscle. Surprised it came out with those tweezers you had.”

“What a shame, would've had to amputate your finger.”

“I'd grow another one. Wouldn't be the first time I'd lost a body part.”

Yaz snorts, sleep finally taking over. “You're like the weirdest person I've ever met.”


	3. there ain't no way that I'm sorry for what I did

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an answer to the mystery, the doctor licks a tree, and a butt touch.
> 
> aka the one where things get ~spicy~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi enjoy <3
> 
> ch title from: sleep by my chemical romance

She wakes sweaty and a bit hot with a firm pressure against her back. Her first reaction is to bolt — someone’s arms around her means trouble — but she doesn’t and after a second she realizes the weight is a _body._ More specifically, the Doctor’s body. The Doctor’s body that is curled against her back, arm snaked around her waist and hand splayed flat over the exposed skin where her camisole had ridden up. A cold nose presses against the back of Yaz’s neck and warm, even breaths ghost over her shoulder. Socked feet are tangled with Yaz’s own at the end of the bed and just as Yaz is starting to think she could go back to sleep, there’s yelling outside the hut.

She’s out of bed in an instant, knife pulled from under the pillow as she rushes to the door, throwing it open and waiting a second before sticking her head around the frame. Ryan and Graham are now standing as a woman runs down the road, sobbing. She’s repeating a word over and over again and it’s not until Graham has her near the now smoldering embers that remain of the fire that Yaz understands.

It’s not a word, it’s a name.

* * *

“Right, when did it show up?” the Doctor asks.

“They check it every morning at sunrise. Said it was her turn to check this week and the name had appeared overnight,” Graham says, a bit off to the side.

The Doctor kneels on the sand and leans close to the tree, smelling the freshly carved name. Yaz _swears_ she sees her tongue dart out and lick the wood for a split second. She runs her fingers over the jagged letters and sits back on her heels.

“It’s definitely new, within the last few hours, but I can’t get a read on what they used to carve it.” She pulls out her sonic and points it at the tree, the orange crystal lighting up as it emits that weird noise. She holds it up to her face to read. “Yeah, no idea.”

“So what do we do?” Ryan asks from his spot next to Graham. Yaz stands on the other side of the Doctor, arms crossed over her chest but most definitely only for the quick way with which she could pull a gun if need be.

The Doctor squints up at them, then stands and brushes the sand off her trousers. “We go find her and we don’t let her get taken,” she states, starting off into town.

They find the house easy enough and the Doctor knocks this time, waiting on her heels as the door opens a few moments later. The woman who had been screaming earlier now stands there puffy eyed and practically shaking.

The Doctor’s mouth opens but she doesn’t say anything for a long moment, eyes flicking around the woman’s terrified face.

“Please, _save her,_ ” she begs, moving to the side so they can see a girl, younger than Yaz even, sitting on a chair and actually shaking, far worse than her mother. Tears streak down her face and she jumps at every sudden movement like she’s just going to disappear into thin air.

The Doctor nods. “We will,” she says firmly, face set. She steps into the hut and the rest of them follow, Yaz going in last after she takes a long sweep of the surrounding houses and marking out the possible blind spots from where she stands.

“Yaz, Ryan, go in there and stay with her, don’t take your eyes off her and don’t let anyone in the room,” the Doctor orders, pointing to another room off to the left of the small living room.

Ryan motions for the girl to go into the room and she does so on shaky legs, looking like she’s going to collapse at any moment. Graham stays with the Doctor as she takes a look around, talking over her shoulder at the mother.

The room is small with just a single bed in the middle, a chair against the wall next to the door. Ryan takes a seat and leans forward, elbows on his knees, as the girl slowly sits on the bed. Yaz stands against the wall facing the door, her eyes flicking from the girl to the door and back.

“What’s your name?” Ryan asks casually, obviously trying to put her at ease.

The girl bites hard on her bottom lip as her eyes fill with tears but she says, “Ezeh.”

“‘m Ryan, that’s Yaz. So what do you do for a livin, Ezeh? I’m workin’ to be a mechanic, and Yaz here kills people for a livin’.” He motions to Yaz standing there with her arms crossed and Ezeh looks at her with wide, scared eyes. Ryan puts his hands out, waving them slightly. “Not you! The Doctor, and like, bad guys I think.”

“She’s trying to kill the Doctor?” Ezeh asks, sounding even more scared by that information. Yaz feels for her — if she was gonna be taken and burned with unknown acid only to come back a vicious shell of herself and her only help was a bubbly blonde, two lads from Sheffield, and an assassin sent to kill the bubbly blonde, she’d be bloody worried too.

“Not anymore, don’t think. Least I hope not. Are you still tryin’ to kill the Doc, Yaz?” he asks, turning to her.

Yaz almost says the snarky remark burning on the tip of her tongue but this girl looks like she’s going to burst into tears at any moment. Yaz looks over at him. “Not anymore, unfortunately.”

“Great! See? Yaz is a good guy now, we think.”

Ezeh looks like that barely helped and Ryan starts talking about school and trying to become a mechanic and the garage he sometimes helps out in on his free days and as he talks his hands move and he looks _comfortable_ , in his element. He talks confidently and with great detail and Ezeh actually starts to look like she’s relaxing if only by degrees.

Yaz feels herself relax as he talks and maybe it’s that, or maybe she gets distracted and he looks away and when they both look back, Ezeh — who was just sitting on the bed — is now gone. The indent from her slowly evens itself out until there’s no trace of her left, like she was never even there. Ryan looks at her and Yaz looks over at him and they both say, “ _Oh shit.”_

* * *

“What do you mean she just _disappeared?_ ” the Doctor snaps, walking into the room in front of Ryan. She points her sonic at the place Ezeh was sitting moments earlier and reads the screen.

“She just disappeared! We were looking at her and I were talkin’ and then she was gone!” Ryan insists. “Just gone, no trace of her.”

“I thought I told you to keep an eye on her,” the Doctor says, sounding annoyed.

“We did!” Ryan protests. “She just —“

“— disappeared, right. Good news is I think I can track this. Left behind quite a messy trail but it should be straightforward enough to follow,” the Doctor says. She turns to the mother who is sobbing loudly in the room, practically yelling Ezeh’s name. “We need horses, do you know anyone that can help us?”

The woman pulls herself together with a deep inhale and nods. “Yivori, he can help. He raises the horses on the edge of town.”

The Doctor nods. “Can you lead us there?”

The only horses he has able to make the long journey (about 10 kilometers, if her sonic is correct) are almost identical — snow white and quite a bit larger than any horses Yaz has seen in her life.

“Woah,” Ryan says when they step out of the barn, the man leading them with rope.

“This is Ozir,” he says, handing the rope to Graham. The horse steps up next to him and the top of his back comes two or three inches above Graham’s head. “And this is Eizek.” He hands the lead rope to Yaz and the horse steps up to her and the Doctor, hooves stomping on the hard packed dirt.

“Bloody hell,” Ryan says, looking up at the Ozir’s face. He huffs at Ryan who almost jumps out of his skin.

Yaz bites back a laugh. “They can smell fear, y’know.”

Ryan raises his brows and motions to the horse. “This thing is bloody huge, how can you not be afraid? You both barely go to it’s shoulders!”

The Doctor puts her palm against the side of their horse and smiles. “This is brilliant, thank you Yivori,” she says, giving the man a smile and ignoring Ryan completely.

Yivori takes them to a platform about 6 feet in the air and helps each of them get on. Yaz drives — she’s never ridden a horse but like, she’s not trusting the Doctor to do it _and_ navigate _and_ not fall off. Ryan sits in front of Graham because it was easier for him to get on first and lean forward than get on after, so he ends up driving Ozir.

It’s not hard, Eizek mostly does everything on his own and Yaz only has to move her hips slightly to each side to steer. Ryan, Graham, and Ozir stay close behind as Ozir will follow the direction of Eizek no matter what, making steering easier on Ryan.

The Doctor is pressed against her back, one hand loosely around Yaz’s waist, hand settled on the inside of her thigh, and the other holding the sonic and pointing it in front of them every so often and telling Yaz which way to steer. Yaz can feel every single inhale the Doctor takes and very much ignores the rocking of their hips together with every step the horse takes.

It’s hot under the suns and the Doctor hands them pouches of water Yivori had packed in a small saddle bag about halfway through when they stop. She lets the horses drink from her hand and Yaz does the same for Ryan and Graham’s horse (which they don’t dismount because there is no way Graham could get himself up there without the platform and no one wanted to be the one to lift him up). They put the water pouches back in the saddle bag and the Doctor hooks her foot in the stirrup, holding the saddle in each hand and trying to pull herself up. She can’t get high enough to get her leg around and Yaz steps close.

“I’ll lift you, just be ready to jump,” she says. The Doctor nods and grips hard to the saddle above her. Yaz steps forward and puts two hands on her hips. “Okay, jump,” Yaz says, and when she gets high enough Yaz moves her hands back from her hips and onto her arse, pushing her up. The Doctor’s leg swings over the top of the horse and for a second Yaz thinks she’d pushed too hard and the Doctor is going to clear the horse completely, but she stops at the last minute. Her hands grip hard to the saddle and she rights herself, grin big on her face when she looks back down at Yaz.

“I did it!” she says excitedly, looking up at the boys.

“Surprisin’,” Ryan says. “She trips on everything. Clumsiest person I know — other than me, and I’ve got a reason.”

Yaz hooks her foot in the stirrup when the Doctor removes her boot and she swings herself up, sitting easily in front of the Doctor.

“Now _that_ was impressive,” Ryan says. Yaz can’t help the smile that comes over her face when she looks over her shoulder and catches sight of the Doctor’s huff and pout.

Yaz starts off the way the Doctor instructs and barely a minute in she feels her wiggling behind her, thighs hot on the outside of Yaz’s own and hips digging into her backside.

“You alright?” Yaz asks.

“Yeah, just — are you uncomfortable? Think the saddle’s slipped or somethin’,” the Doctor says, wiggling her hips again. She holds hard to Yaz’s thigh as she shifts and Yaz clenches her jaw hard, keeping as steady as possible. The Doctor squirms against her back and rolls her hips forward, pushing Yaz further against the saddle. “Oh!” the Doctor gasps, breath hot against the back of Yaz’s neck, goosebumps forming in the aftermath. “Got it, was me sonic.”

So like, Yaz is gay. That’s not new or even very pertinent information most of the time since she doesn’t _do_ relationships, like at all. And it literally never is a problem on jobs — well, not until the Doctor starts to slip to the side and both of her hands grab at Yaz’s shirt, her right firmly holding onto her side. Yaz instinctively grabs at her wrist and holds tight to keep her from completely falling off the horse.

“Doc, are you alright?” Graham asks behind them.

“Just brilliant, Graham, thanks for askin’,” the Doctor says loudly. “Thanks Yaz,” she says quieter, straightening herself on the saddle behind her and finally keeping still. Her sonic comes out and she points it in front of them. “A bit to the left.”

Yaz tilts her hips a bit and the horse follows. She ignores the pounding in her chest. The Doctor doesn’t remove the hand from her side, resting just over her ribs now and rubbing the t-shirt softly beneath her thumb.

* * *

It’s a building. A tall building. A tall building with a few windows and it also looks practically deserted.

Yaz gets off Eizek first, then helps the Doctor down with her hands on her hips. Ryan lands mostly on his feet and Graham slides off since it’s easier. They tie the horses to a post they find outside the building and everyone looks to the Doctor.

“What’s the plan, Doc? Looks deserted,” Graham says, squinting up at the building.

“Lets go in,” the Doctor says simply, leading them to the door on the side of the building.

“That’s not a good idea, is it?” Ryan asks Yaz, following behind Graham into the building. He holds the door for Yaz who shakes her head, hand already poised on her weapon.

“Probably not,” she whispers.

The door brings them into a big empty room, the only light streaming in from the windows high up on the walls. The Doctor uses her sonic again and walks them to a door on the other end of the room. It opens into a long white hallway, closed doors lining each side and at the end, what looks to be door leading to stairs to the other floors.

“What’s behind those doors?” Ryan whispers.

The fam moves towards the first door and the Doctor tries the handle — locked. She points her sonic at it and it clicks open, swinging towards her slowly and silently. She peeks her head in then leans back, shutting it after her.

“Empty,” she says. “A shame, was hopin’ for a surprise.”

“I don’t like that there’s no one here. It doesn’t look that abandoned,” Graham says uneasily.

Ryan tries the handle of another door and it’s also locked until the Doctor points her sonic at it. “Other than the fact that it’s in the middle of the desert with nothing else around it?” He opens the door then steps back and shuts it again, shaking his head. “Empty.”

The Doctor moves to the next door and that’s when they hear it — the pained moaning.

The Doctor is at the door in an instant, trying the handle then pointing her sonic at it. Yaz is not fully prepared for what they find in that room and the flare of anger that burns in her stomach at the sight surprises even herself. It rolls over her body like a forest fire and she honest to god sees red for a minute, vowing to hurt whoever has obviously hurt these people.

There are beds set up in rows, each one with a different person on it hooked up to either machines, an IV dripping fluid, or both. They all have their wrists and ankles restrained to the bed and some moan in pain, heads lolling to the side.

“Oh my god,” Ryan says.

“Doc, what is this? What are they doin’ to them?” Graham asks.

No one moves further into the room but the smell hits them all the same — burning, rotting flesh. It sits in patches on their bodies and looks like Trin from the hut in town, but ten times worse. He at least had skin to be _burnt._ These people look like mostly exposed muscle.

Ryan moves from the doorway but doesn’t throw up in the hall (thank god).He leans against the wall, hands on his knees as he take a few deep breaths through his mouth.

Yaz looks back to the Doctor — back tense, fits clenched at her sides. Her jaw works as she studies the people tied to the beds and she steps forward, pulling her sonic out and pointing it at one of the figures. She reads the screen for a long moment, longer than she usually does and that’s when Yaz notices her hands shaking. Not a lot, but enough that her sonic shakes as well.

Yaz steps up next to her. “Is it the same as Trin?” she asks, knowing the answer already.

The Doctor nods and swallows hard.

“Do you know what it is?"

The Doctor shakes her head, her eyes dancing about the room over every single figure, stopping at one bed with a woman strapped to it, her skin the least burned ( _Ezeh,_ Yaz realizes). When they sweep over towards Yaz she sees that fire there — the familiar flame that now reflects the forest fire burning in Yaz’s chest.

All these people, barely Yaz’s age and turned into _this._ Practically discarded.

“Do you know who’s doing this?” Yaz asks.

The Doctor shakes her head and they both step out of the room, shutting the door behind them. She’s silent for a long moment, Ryan and Graham both seemingly oblivious to the barely contained anger that seems to burn under her skin.

“Do you have a plan, Doc? Like a cure or somethin’ that will save those people?” Graham asks.

The Doctor looks back at the door and swallows again, her jaw clenched tight. “Not yet, workin’ on it,” she says evenly.

The door at the end of the hall opens and all four of them turn their heads to the noise. A man steps out into the brightly lit hall and takes one step forward before he sees them. His eyes flick over each of them, landing on the Doctor’s hand still gripping the door handle, and he runs back the way he came.

“Oh fuck no,” Yaz grumbles, immediately taking off after him. She swings open the door and sees him running up the stairs, about two flights above her already. She takes them two at a time and god damn, there are a _lot_ of stairs. On the third set she hears the door below her open and boots running up, then trainers, then Graham say, “Well _I’m_ not runnin’ up all these stairs.”

The man she chases pants loudly as he runs and Yaz starts to close in on him, almost able to jump out and grab him. They get to the top and he bursts through the door, shutting it closed behind him. Yaz hits it with her shoulder but is knocked back.

She steadies her feet and kicks hard with one foot, close to the handle and lock. The door shakes but doesn’t budge and the Doctor runs up a second later, pointing her sonic at it. The lock clicks and Yaz bursts through, eyes scanning the roof for the man.

He’s kneeling at the far corner and Yaz takes off, hand already moving to her thigh by instinct. Her boots grip the rough roof tiling and she pulls her arm back, throwing a knife with pinpoint accuracy. It hits exactly where she planned and the man drops the device in his hands (what looks to be some sort of teleport or something). He grabs at his shoulder but can’t reach the knife embedded there.

Yaz delivers a sharp kick between his shoulder blades and he sprawls on the ground, moaning in pain. She quickly pulls the knife out and flips him over, standing over him with her feet planted on either side of his hips. She grabs the white shirt he wears and lifts him from the ground. She leans down, growl ready in her throat.

“Yaz!” the Doctor yells behind her, boots coming to a halt a few meters away.

Yaz ignores her and brings the sharp knife up to his throat. His eyes are wide and terrified when he looks up at her, hands shaking.

“You run this place, mate?” she asks coldly.

He doesn’t answer — his mouth moves wordlessly but no sound comes out and Yaz tires of the non answer quick. She presses the knife harder against his neck.

“Answer the question,” she growls.

“Yaz,” the Doctor says, warning in her voice.

Yaz moves the knife from his throat to his collarbone, pressing the blade hard enough to his skin to draw blood. He cries out. “Yes, I — please —“

Yaz stops the pressure but doesn’t remove the knife. “What are you doin’ to them?” she demands.

“I can’t tell you —“ he stammers, voice cut off with another cry as Yaz starts pulling the blade slowly across his skin. It cuts through like a hot knife through butter and leaves a dripping red line in it’s wake.

“Yaz, _stop,_ ” the Doctor says — _demands_.

Yaz ignores her. The man pants and Yaz moves the knife up to cut him again, close to the first. He shakes his head, “No, please,” he begs.

“Answer the question.”

He looks down at the knife, fear clear in his eyes. “I really can’t tell you — they’ll kill me if —“

“Mate, not sure if you’re aware, but I’m about to kill you right now. Tell me what you’re doin’ to those people or I swear to god I’ll literally rip your arm off.” She pulls the blade down his skin again for good measure, slicing through easily.

“Yaz!” the Doctor yells, closer now, like she’s going to stop her.

( _She wouldn’t dare_.)

“Testing,” he pants. “We’re testing a new type of biological weapon — they needed to see how it reacts to skin — please let me go.”

“So you decided to test it on these people? Their _children_?” she spits. Anger courses through her veins and she tightens her hold on the knife in her hand. She closes her eyes and breathes through her nose heavily, trying to calm herself. “Where is it?” she asks, voice cold and even — barely restrained.

The man starts patting his pockets, then he pulls out a set of keys and holds them up. “H-Here, in the basement. It’s all automatic systems,” he stammers.

Yaz lets him drop back to the floor and takes the keys from his hand, throwing them behind her to Ryan who has just run up.

“Check it out, can probably neutralize it with somethin’,” she says.

Ryan doesn’t move, his eyes wide and flicking from Yaz to the Doctor.

The Doctor nods towards the roof door. “Go on, call me when you get there. And find Graham, he’s probably still on the stairs.”

Ryan looks back to Yaz with an unreadable expression on his face as his eyes then move to the man moaning and bleeding on the ground beneath her, then he takes off towards the roof door.

“Are you done?” the Doctor asks coldly, moving past her to kneel at the man’s side. She checks the cuts on his shoulder then tries to move him to his side to see the wound on his back. Yaz watches from the side, arms crossed over her chest, and she only jumps in when the Doctor untucks her shirts and starts to rip at the bottom of them, trying to tear off strips (probably to stop the bleeding).

Yaz pulls a small vial out of the inside of her jacket and kneels on the other side of the man, then tries to nudge the Doctor’s hands away but the Doctor doesn’t move, eyes narrowing in on the vial with distrust.

“It’s something to stop the bleedin’,” Yaz explains. The Doctor doesn’t move her hands and Yaz rolls her eyes. “It’s not bloody poison, just let me pour it on.”

The Doctor lets her uncap the vial but then plucks it from her fingers, bringing it up to her nose. She sniffs it, then darts her tongue out to the edge. When she’s apparently satisfied she’s not foaming at the mouth, she hands the vial back.

“Pour it on when I move my hand, ready?”

Yaz nods and as soon as the Doctor moves her other hand Yaz pours the powder in. The bleeding stops almost immediately and Yaz sits back, recapping the blood covered vial and putting it back in her jacket.

The Doctor’s phone rings in her pocket and she looks around helplessly for somewhere to wipe her bloody hands. Yaz pulls out a rag from her back pocket and hands it to her, which the Doctor accepts without looking up, then she pulls the phone out and holds it up to her ear. “Did you find it?”

The Doctor doesn’t look at her when she stands from her knees, walking off to talk to Ryan, keeping Yaz in her periphery.

The man moans when he rolls to his back again, the cuts crusted in now dried blood.

“Your girlfriend seems angry,” he mumbles weakly.

Yaz kicks him in the ribs when she stands.

* * *

The next few hours are…long, to say the least.

They leave that man on the roof after they neutralize the acid, and it turns out the trip had brought them quite a bit closer to the tardis than the trip from the tardis to the town, and it’s barely a twenty minute ride back to the ship. The Doctor starts the tardis on a possible medicinal cure with the information from her sonic and then pulls the lever, taking them to the building a few minutes later.

The man is still on the roof and the Doctor makes Yaz and Ryan drag him inside before they drop him off at the shittiest hospital in the galaxy (not the Doctor’s exact words, but pretty close), then they go back to the town and the Doctor talks to Yivori about getting a group together to go get the survivors. He nods seriously and starts yelling at men to help him with the horses.

She’s about to get back on the tardis when she feels a tug at the back of her jacket. She turns to find the little boy from days ago standing there, staring up at her. Yaz looks back at the fam but only Ryan and Graham are looking, the Doctor already back at the console and looking hard at the buttons.

She kneels down and the little boy wraps his arms around her neck in a big hug. His skin is warm and his cheek burns against hers as he holds her, and after a second she hugs him back loosely (it’s like the first hug she’s gotten in three years, at least).

He whispers in her ear, “Thank you, Miss Khan,” before pulling away. He nods at her once then runs back to Hukve and Nikran who nod at her. Nikran holds the syringe against her chest like it’s the most precious thing she’s ever held.

The cure itself is in the form of a shot and doesn’t completely fix the burns and skin loss, but it helps enough to where they’re not moaning in pain anymore and mostly return back to themselves (as much as can be expected, really). With the four of them doing it they get through the twenty or so people in a few minutes. They wait patiently until the men from the village get to the building before they bid them all goodbye and file back into the tardis.

The Doctor doesn’t look at her once the entire time.

* * *

“I didn’t kill him,” Yaz says after Ryan and Graham make some excuse like thirty seconds later about being exhausted (which, okay, could be true because Yaz herself is exhausted) and disappearing down one of the hallways.

The Doctor doesn’t say anything, just presses buttons as she moves around the console (probably not even doing anything).

Yaz crosses her arms over her chest. “Are you gonna ever look at me again? I didn’t even kill him,” she repeats, because that’s like a big thing. She totally could’ve killed him (and she definitely wanted to) and she _didn’t._

The Doctor grips the edge of the console, head bowed for a second before she looks over at Yaz with a sigh. “We don’t hurt people, Yaz. Not on purpose — not ever on purpose.” Her voice is cold and even and it legitimately surprises Yaz so much that she takes a step back.

“You’re mad because I _hurt_ him?” she asks, disbelief lacing her words. “I got the job done, didn’t I?”

The Doctor pulls a lever and throws her hands up, turning to face Yaz completely. “Yaz, how can I trust you to travel with us — with _Ryan and Graham_ — if your first reaction is violence? This team doesn’t hurt people, not when there’s another way.”

Yaz barks out a harsh laugh. “Well we weren’t getting much out of him to begin with. Just thought I’d speed things along before one of those kids _died._ ” She ignores the hard beat of her heart, the words _how can I trust you_ repeating over and over in her head as she takes a step forward.

“I saw your eyes, Doctor. I saw the way you felt for those people, the anger and _hatred_ at that man. I saw the way you barely kept it contained as I got the necessary information out of him — cause y’know what, Doctor?” Yaz takes another step forward and they’re practically toe to toe. “As much as you hate to admit it, we’re not so different. Only thing is I’m willing to do what needs to be done no matter what and you hide behind a mask — a face so disarming even a trained assassin took pity on you,” she growls.

The Doctor tenses her jaw, hazel eyes staring cold back at Yaz. That fire flickers behind but it’s not anger that stokes the flames — it’s disappointment, sadness, even.

It makes Yaz’s stomach turn.

“I seem violent because I don’t let emotions run my decisions,” Yaz says, then takes a step back, holding her hands up and ignoring the knots now prominent in her stomach. “But obviously I’m too violent for this team — am I home?” she asks, opening the door of the tardis and taking a step out without checking to see if they’re even on New Earth or just floating in the time vortex or something.

The pavement is hard under her boots and she doesn’t look back, not even when she hears the door slam, the choked whir of the tardis disappearing into the afternoon.


	4. gotta dig my own grave just to learn my lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yaz isn't doing great after she leaves the tardis and fam (but if you'd mention that she'd literally kill you).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok just a lil hskp: i’m gonna be taking a few weeks off to finish this fic and get it how i want it before posting the rest. I wanna make this fic the best i can and i think having a deadline is givin me anxiety SO i will not be back for a few weeks BUT i will be back eventually so don’t worry. Ill probs be uploading smaller stuff like oneshots too. Ok thank u i hope u guys enjoy <3
> 
> also yes toxic plays during that entire fight scene alright
> 
> ch title from: am i high rn by quinn xcii

She gets another job barely half an hour after she had been picked up 3 days ago (that probably would be more confusing if she didn’t literally have her own ship with a vortex manipulator in it).

It’s shady and dirty and exactly what she needs to remind her of who she is —  _ what  _ she is.

She leaves that evening strapped up with a new gun she had bought last week and never used and a knife hidden in her boot just in case things get out of hand. She pulls the hood up on her jacket and walks through the rainy streets, the only light by the artificial moon cast in the sky. Her boots stomp through puddles as she crosses the street quickly, staying mostly in the shadows.

She finds the restaurant easy enough and pulls the hood down when she gets inside. The bell above the door jingles loud and the group of men all turn their heads to her as she approaches their table slowly.

“You order a girl?” One man with a thick neck asks another man who sort of looks like a bird.

Bird man is her mark.

Yaz smiles, leaning forward on the table. She wants to hold this out as long as she can — the catch. The way she pulls them in with a disarming smile, a few suggestive looks and well timed remarks and they’re offering her a seat at the table, even moving over to let her sit down. Yaz leans forward on the table and puts her face in her hands, staring up at bird man and wondering what he’d look like with her knife to his throat when a warm palm suddenly makes its way up her thigh.

She doesn’t react, just uncrosses her legs. Bird man smirks like he’s getting away with something and Yaz innocently moves her hand to her lower back, pulling the gun from it’s holster.

It’s so easy that she’s sort of disappointed then it’s over and all three men lay slumped at the table, bullet wounds leaking blood onto their faces. She takes a minute to just stare at them, trying to remember the rush of adrenaline she used to get after a job completed, then snapping a picture with her phone and sending it to the contact (a different one than  _ mission theta _ ).

The contact leaves the briefcase of money next to the bench across the street from the restaurant and Yaz quickly picks it up when she walks past, moving towards her flat. She takes a roundabout way and pulls down the fire escape instead of using the front entrance, pushing up her bedroom window and throwing the case in first before climbing in herself.

The money is all there and she divides it up into a few separate freezer bags for various banks in the galaxy that she deposits money to (all to keep anyone looking off her trail). She’ll send half —  _ no, 3/4 _ — to her mum for all of them and keep the rest, maybe get a new thigh holster since hers is starting to fray at the edges from frequent use.

She’s watching some terrible movie on the tv set in her living room, the bright glow of the screen lighting up the room in a flicker as a woman hides from the murderer, a knife clutched (the wrong way, Yaz notes) in her hand, ready to stab. Yaz brings another mouthful of reheated noodles from last night (3 nights ago in her time) to her mouth when her eyes flick briefly from the screen.

It’s her boots laying near the door where she had kicked them off earlier — one sitting up and one laying sideways, the top facing her. A string of yellow beads shine in the glow of the television, like a beacon (like warm glowing crystals she’s only seen a handful of times, and yet she aches all the same).

Yaz wants to rip them off.

(She doesn’t.)

* * *

She works more, fills her time as much as she can. It’s easy to get jobs in this city — everyone has someone they’d like dead and Yaz comes with good references from bad people. On days when she doesn’t have a job she gets herself hired as security for some event downtown and she mostly spends that night pushing people away from the stage where the performers are (and also she punches a drunk guy in the face, but he was totally asking for it).

Her mind starts to numb, the violence and anger simmers in her blood at first but settles into a gentle ache in her bones as the week wears on. She keeps her thoughts running fast enough that _how can I trust you?_ doesn’t feel like a stab in the gut every time and she barely gives herself a chance to feel stupid for ever trusting the Doctor in the first place.

(Her ability to push emotions down far enough to where they’re almost unrecognizable would be admiral if she wasn’t actively hurting herself in the process.)

She doesn’t really have… _ friends _ where she lives (well, except for Bill at the shop down the street who asks her out at least twice a month), and her family is so far away that the idea of going back there just isn’t feasible at the moment. She realizes after almost a week that the only words she’s said to another person (not during a fight and/or murder) is to the barista across the road, and that’s just her coffee order and a “ _ thanks _ ” when it’s handed to her at the counter.

She used to be so good at being alone — at not talking to another person for days on end until her mum called on Thursday night (every week, without fail). She used to be fine watching TV at night and eating takeout on her couch while she sharpens a knife or counts cash or scrolls through social media, looking at all the pictures of people she barely knows anymore (who sure as hell don’t know  _ her  _ anymore). It irritates her more than it should and she shuts the laptop, throwing it off her lap to the other side of the couch.

You know when you try your hardest not to think about something and your mind just can’t help thinking about it anyways?

Yeah.

* * *

Her phone rings just as her fist connects with a man’s nose, the crunch solid under her knuckles. He stumbles back, reaching up to his nose as blood gushes out, an angry look on his face. Yaz is readying another punch to his gut when his foot connects with her hip, pushing her back forcefully. She grunts and he approaches, grin on his face. Yaz kicks out hard at his kneecap and he screams, falling to the ground. His leg is bent a way it should  _ not  _ bend and is probably  _ really  _ painful (she doesn’t care).

“Oi, mate, shut the fuck up,” Yaz says, pulling the still ringing phone from her pocket.

The man continues to groan in pain and Yaz rolls her eyes, pulling her boot back and delivering a sharp kick to the side of his head. He’s quiet after that as his eyes close, mouth lulled open. She reaches down and unclips the ID card from his jacket pocket, slipping it in her own for possible later use.

“Hi mum,” Yaz says into the phone.

“Yasmin! What took you so long? I thought you’d been hurt or something,” Najia says from the other end.

Yaz looks down to the man and wipes her bloody knuckles on her pants. “I’m fine, mum. Were in the bathroom.”

“Well, how have you been? How’s work this week?” Yaz hears the sound of the TV in the background and imagines her mum sitting on the couch in the flat that was Yaz’s home for barely a year (and even then she’d be out most of the time, doing jobs to get her mum the money she needed to afford a flat like that).

“Good,” Yaz says, trying to breathe normally. She’s sweaty under her jacket but moves on, her right leg aching a bit where she got kicked (he didn’t hold back apparently). “Someone stole my lunch out of the fridge last week,” she lies. It sounds like something that happens at a normal job, right? Yaz has never had one — or well, not one that paid over the table.

“You should tell your HR, I heard she’s even  _ human. _ I know Kerblam! has a lot of robots but it’s good that they kept a human on for that role,” her mum says.

“Yeah, I’ll probably do that,” Yaz lies again. At this point it’s so easy she almost believes it as she walks down the hall, holding her phone between her shoulder and cheek as she tries the stolen ID card in a door — no access. She moves to the next door.

“Have you made any friends?”

Yaz almost says yes — almost says  _ yeah, they’re humans from the 21st century and a thousands of years old alien and we saved a bunch of people from being experimented on.  _ She almost says,  _ yeah, but I fucked it up like always. _

“Sort of — a few. Just work friends,” she says instead, because it feels safer than lying or telling the truth.

“That’s good — you’re still new, you’ve gotta get your bearings,” her mum says.

The lock to one door finally turns green when she tries the ID card and she asks, “How’s Sonya?”

* * *

She’s angry — woke up angry, actually.

Blonde hair flashes in her mind, a bright grin, then the grin drops and the Doctor says, “ _ How could I ever have trusted someone like you? Someone who only knows violence and pain? How could you let yourself believe that? _ ”

Her phone rings, she ignores the call, and though the caller ID says  _ unknown number _ she knows exactly who it is, and she knows she’s late on an update. What would she say? She didn’t end up killing her mark when she had the chance, decided to go travel with them, got so caught up in someone actually trusting her that when she was shown the truth she just left, and now she has no idea where the Doctor is?

Yeah, that would probably go over  _ great. _

She has to take her bike to this hit since it’s too far to walk and public transportation doesn’t run this late at night. She parks two blocks away from the building and leaves the helmet on the seat.

Her information said he lives on the top floor of the tall building and to expect a heavy presence of guards. Yaz unzips her jacket and pulls the front of her shirt down a little bit, just a bit to show enough cleavage to use to her advantage. She walks right through the front door, past the metal detectors and to the front desk, a smile set on her face. Her hair is tied back but down and she lets part of it fall over her shoulder as she looks up at the tall man now standing. The ruffle in his jacket tells her he’s packing — one gun if not two — and he doesn’t look amused at her showing up so late.

“Hi, I’m  _ so lost _ , would you be able to —“

“Get out, we’re closed,” the man says stoically. He glares down at her with distaste.

Yaz doesn’t falter. “If you could just tell me how to get to —“

“I said get out. We’re closed. Get your directions elsewhere,” he growls.

Yaz steps back from the desk, eyebrow raised. “Right, mate. Sorry,” she says, pulling the gun from the back of her pants before he has a chance to blink and pulling the trigger, bullet hitting her target straight on.

The sound is loud and echoes and she immediately wishes she hadn’t used the gun —  _ stupid,  _ she’s becoming sloppy. Anger from that dream buzzes under her skin and she tries to shake it off — she doesn’t need to be thinking about the Doctor right now. She pulls the ID card from the man's neck and moves to the lifts, pressing the button and waiting.

It takes  _ forever _ and she hears boots on the stairs as soon as the doors open. The door to the stairwell bursts open as the lift doors close slowly and Yaz sticks the card in the slot, pressing the button for the top floor. An old 21st century song plays softly over the speakers (she’s pretty sure Ryan played it for her and told her it was called Toxic by someone named Britney Spear) as she’s transported up. She feels her back pocket for the throwing knives when the doors open, the music spilling out into the silent hall.

“Right, which one of you wants to go first?” Yaz asks the group of men, their guns already poised at her. She doesn’t wait for an answer before grabbing the wrist of the closest gun, ducking out of the way as it fires centimeters above her head.

She gets the gun from his hand and fires two quick, deadly accurate shots to two of the guards, then she moves to the next one. She drops the second gun and pulls out a knife, throwing it fast through the air as she takes out another guard with a bullet at the same time. She hears one of the men scream and she throws another knife in that direction, the blade whizzing through the air and landing right on target.

She moves fast, sweeping her leg out and tripping a guard advancing on her and landing a hard punch to his face when he falls to the ground. When she turns there’s a gun pointed straight at her face and she throws her arm out in a millisecond, moving the aim to right over her shoulder where a man has both hands pinned to the wall with two throwing knives piercing his palms. The scream is cut off with a gunshot and her ears ring loud from the noise.

She bends the guards hand out of the grip on the gun and it clatters to the floor when she delivers a sharp uppercut. Her knuckles ache and she’s bloody tired now and even more pissed off than she was when she’d entered.

Yaz kicks at his foot but he doesn’t budge and she dodges a messy punch, obviously self trained with no grace to his movements. He’s bulky and slow and probably used to using his weight in fights than his ability to maneuver. He gets ahold of her jacket and throws her against the wall, advancing on her. She tries to dodge out of the way again but he grabs her at the last second and a sharp blow is delivered to her stomach.

She almost throws up right there, her stomach aching to hell and back. She manages to pull her knife when she’s bent over and moves fast, slicing his arm to distract him, then slicing at his side, then shoving the blade deep into his stomach. He grunts and his hands fly to where the knife is buried in him but she’s pulling it out, making a sweeping gesture and slicing the front of his neck.

He steps back and hits the wall, falling to the floor with his hands holding his throat, blood pouring from both wounds. His eyes lock on Yaz standing there — sweaty and breathing hard and feeling like she’s going to throw up and not entirely because of the punch.

She pulls both knives from the man now sagging down the wall and only being held up by his hands and wipes them on her pants, then picks up a gun and sticks it into the back of her pants, picking up another and checking the ammo left. She uses the stolen ID card to get into the suite and the man is so surprised (apparently the suite is soundproofed and he hadn’t heard any of what happened) he doesn’t even fight her when she presses the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger without hesitation, cold stare looking down at him as he kneels before her.

It makes her a little sick when the gun goes off, bullet shooting straight into his brain, killing him instantly.

The door to the suite kicks open and Yaz wants to groan — she’s so  _ tired,  _ why can’t this one be easy?

“Freeze! Drop the weapon!” One of the men yells behind her (and really, they should hire more women as guards, then Yaz might actually lose a fight). Yaz puts both hands up, turning slowly.

“Alright, mate?” she says, kneeling down and putting the gun next to the man now laying dead on the plush white rug.

“Stand up,” the man growls. Yaz slowly stands.

“You wanna put the gun down, mate?” she asks.

“No fuckin’ way.”

“Right, sort of rude, but whatever,” Yaz says, then she’s moving, darting to the side and diving behind the couch. Bullets rip into the cushioning and Yaz pulls the gun from the back of her pants and one throwing knife from her pocket. She waits a second after the shooting stops and darts out the side, throwing the knife at the first man, hitting him straight in the throat. She lets off two deadly accurate shots and ends up in the open plan kitchen, crouching behind the island.

If she’s counted the shots correctly each of the three men left should only have about ten shots and she waits as they approach where she’s hiding. Yaz checks the clip of her gun — 3 shots left.

As they step into the kitchen Yaz moves out the side and fires off one shot, hitting one of the men in the knee, causing him to fall to the ground before she fires off another shot, hitting him square in the chest. She pulls back right before bullets take out a big chunk of the marble island and she crawls to the other side, shooting the second man in the neck. She doesn’t pull back this time and when the last man standing points his gun at her it clicks empty — once, twice, three times.

He throws it away, enraged, and Yaz gets to her feet and pulls the knife from her belt as he approaches quickly, throwing his fist out. Yaz ducks and moves to the side and he falls against the counter. He turns before Yaz can get a proper slash at him and he grabs her wrist in mid air, twisting it painfully.

Yaz cries out, the knife dropping from her hand and clattering to the ground. Her wrist throbs, and then her face throbs as her nose starts pouring blood. The man pulls his fist back again to hit her and she kicks up between his legs as hard as she can. It’s a low blow but she doesn’t care and he groans when he bends over. Yaz takes a few steps back and pulls the last throwing knife from her back pocket.

When he straightens up he’s holding the knife Yaz had dropped — blade almost three times the size of the small throwing knife she holds. He grins as he takes a quick slash. Yaz ducks, eyes on the blade and stepping back when he tries to slash down again. He raises his arms to swipe the blade down and Yaz darts under his arm, slicing the small knife into his side. She picks up the fallen gun and feels hot pain shoot in her side as the material of her shirt and skin underneath is cleanly sliced through. He’s clearly taking his time, thinking he’s going to win.

Yaz spins before he can stab down and she slides in a new clip and shoots him twice — once in the stomach, once higher up. He drops the knife and it clatters to the ground as he falls to his knees, looking up at her.

Yaz grabs the knife, pushes the gun in the back of her pants, then darts from the suite and towards the stairs without waiting for the light to leave that guards eyes. The hall is quiet and she runs down the stairs as fast as she can, hand held to her side to keep the bleeding at a minimum. Her head swims, her side aches, and every muscle in her body feels worn out and tired. She leans against the wall halfway down the stairs to catch her breath but doesn’t stop for long when loud boots pound down the stairs above her.

She bursts through the front doors and half runs/half drags herself down the street, hand still holding her side but she can feel the blood seeping through her fingers. Her vision swims and when she gets to her bike she stops for another moment, breathing heavy through her nose.

_ Fuck. _

It’s close to a bloody miracle she makes it back to the flat without like, bleeding out or passing out and by the time she gets in and locks the door her shirt is soaked with blood. She digs through the small box under her bed for the vial of powder ( _ stupid _ , she didn’t fucking refill the one in her jacket after she used it all on that man with the acid) and pulls her wet shirt up to pour it into the wound. It hurts like hell and she grits her teeth, a low groan coming from her throat as it stops the bleeding.

She sits back on her heels, exhausted.  _ Bloody hell _ .

She’s not rushing now as she slowly peels her ruined clothes off, tossing the weapons on her bed and getting out the first aid kit she keeps well stocked for situations like this. She sits on the closed toilet lid, supplies laid out next to her on the edge of the tub.

She doesn’t use any type of numbing cream like the Doctor had on the last wound and so she grabs a hand towel and puts it between her teeth. She cleans off the wound with an antiseptic wash then sterilizes the needle.

One deep breath and she sticks it through her skin, biting down hard on the towel. She tugs the thread through and takes a moment to breathe through her nose and through the swimming in her head she hears the Doctor’s voice — so clear she almost believes it’s in the room with her.

_ Yaz, I’m not gonna hurt you. _

Like a set of flood gates have been opened, Yaz is hit with images, dialogue, laughter and a lightness in her chest she never thought she’d feel again since she was a child.

There’s Ryan and Graham walking next to her in the sand, underneath the hot sun, and Graham with those stupid sunglasses, and Ryan nudging her with his shoulder when she jokes about the 21st century being “the old days”. Graham with a frog on his shoulder (no one knew where it came from or why it chose him), looking over at it then shrugging and letting it ride his shoulder almost the entire day. Ryan showing her his social media (Instagram, that was one of the things that did not follow the human race to New Earth, thank god) and describing in great detail a video game she’s never even heard the name of.

There’s the Doctor and blonde hair swishing around her head as she turns, sunlight shining down and lighting up her face. The Doctor sitting next to her in the sand, barefoot with her pants and shirt sleeves rolled up as the fire dances in front of them. The Doctor with the pale moonlight shining over her face, the Doctor looking up at her from between her legs with cool hands on Yaz’s side as she stitches her wound, the Doctor saying “you were alone” like it explained  _ anything. _

The Doctor with disappointment in her eyes, like she had genuinely thought Yaz might surprise her, act differently than her obvious nature.

Yaz finishes stitching the wound and cuts the thread. She drops the towel from her mouth and stands to look at it in the mirror. It’s a shoddy job and it’ll definitely scar worse than the one above it. Her fingers carefully touch the old wound and  _ can I touch you?  _ repeats over and over in her head like a song she just can’t get rid of. She grips the edge of the sink and closes her eyes, head bowing forward. When they open she looks down at her shoes, inspecting the dirty laces now frayed at the edges and the steel toe that can kick the shit out of someone and the small yellow beaded rope still tied there, a drop of blood marring the rope.

She runs a hand through her hair, cursing herself as she kneels down and licks her thumb, trying to rub the red out of the white rope. She thinks about that boy and his little green arms wrapping around her neck and his “ _ thank you, Miss Khan _ ” after they’d given the cure to Hukve and Nikran.

Yaz sits down on the floor, her side pulling slightly with the movement. She grimaces and leans back against the front of the sink, closing her eyes and seeing a big grin, careful hands giving Yaz the frog from Graham’s shoulder and talking a mile a minute about the properties of an Earth frog compared to this one.

She’s tired —  _ so fucking tired  _ — of running, of fighting, of the life she’s ended up in. She’s tired and she  _ wants  _ — what does she want?

The realization clears as though it had been there the entire time, just waiting for her to get her head out of her ass.

She wants to be trusted —  _ depended  _ on — and she ruined that before she could really appreciate it for what it was.

She collapses in bed minutes later with two aching wounds, only one of them actually visible.


	5. i've made my mistakes that i've paid for in heartache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things don’t get better for yaz (actually they get much, much worse)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me saying im taking two weeks off them taking a month+ off :) I honestly don't know when ch6 will be out - i haven't had a ton of energy to write recently so it's been taking me longer to get through these chapters so i'm sorry abt that.
> 
> reminder that this fic is tagged with graphic depictions of violence. id say its like criminal minds level of violence, maybe less, i cant remember the last time i watched criminal minds.
> 
> ch title from: all I think about is you by ansel elgort

“If you wanted to take me out, mate, all you had to do was ask,” Bill says, moving the pin in the lock with one hand and holding the tension wrench with the other. “Granted, not my ideal date, but it’ll do —“

“Are you done yet?” Yaz asks, looking around them at the empty street. It’s like two in the morning and very unlikely that someone is going to walk past and see them but they’re basically out in the open, a streetlight a few feet away practically shining down on them like a spotlight.

“What, nervous?” Bill quips, looking up at her with a smirk before turning the tools and pushing the door open.

“Finally,” Yaz mumbles, walking carefully into the building. She turns her torch on but covers the light with her hand, dimming the bright beam that comes out. Bill follows her past the reception desk and Yaz starts rummaging around in the drawers, finally finding what she’s looking for. She turns and moves past Bill towards the stairs and Bill follows again.

“We’re not taking the lift?” Bill whispers.

“Too conspicuous,” Yaz whispers back. She swipes the ID card that she’d taken from the reception desk and the light turns green on the lock, clicking open. Yaz pushes the door open and steps into the stairwell that stretches on above them.

“Christ, what floor?”

“Thirteen.”

“Great.” Bill starts up the stairs in the almost pitch black dark. Yaz follows after her.

Their feet make soft thumps on the metal stairs as they walk and each sound makes Yaz uneasy — they’re being too loud, the guards are gonna catch them. She really doesn’t want to kill anyone anymore. After the last bad job, she’s stayed low for a few days, declining jobs until she got one she felt was with low enough stakes.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket when they get to the eleventh floor and Yaz pulls it out, looking down at the bright screen in her hand.  _ Unknown number  _ stares back at her and she clicks it off, ignoring the call as she puts her phone back.

“Is it that guy — what’s his name —“

“It’s not Ryan, he doesn’t even have my number. And he lives in 2020.”

“Is it the woman then? The one you were supposed to kill and ended up shaggin’—“

“We didn’t —“

“Sorry,  _ sleeping together.  _ And you shared a horse. Listen mate, I’m just sayin’ —“

“Will you  _ shut up _ ?” Yaz hisses when they get to the door at the thirteenth floor. She stops with her hand on the handle, trying to still her racing heart (funny how it only started racing when Bill mentioned the Doctor — must’ve been a delayed response to the walk up the stairs or something).

Yaz opens it slowly, peeking around the door frame to see a long white hallway lined with doors leading to offices on either side. At the end sits a clear glass door with a large keypad and screen fixed to the wall. Yaz takes careful steps down the hall towards those doors. “Think you can override that?”

Bill kneels down and shrugs off the backpack when they get to the glass doors. She pulls out a small device with wires hanging off it and taps the screen a few times. “Should be able to. Did you really not shag?”

“I’ve only known her for like a week, Bill,” Yaz hisses. “And for half that time I was actively planning on killing her.”

Bill stands and pulls the panel from the wall next to the keypad. She plugs in the two wires and starts typing on the device in her hand. “I’m just sayin’, if she’s as hot as you said —“

“I didn’t say that.”

“— and she were givin’ you bedroom eyes when she stitched you up —“

“I didn’t say that either.”

“— then it should’ve been a no brainer. You haven’t shagged in months. You deserve it, mate.”

“How would you know when the last time I’ve shagged was?” Yaz asks, looking down the hallway nervously.

“Yaz, I was the one that set you two up.” Bill taps again on the screen, then the keypad turns green and the lock clicks in the doors. “Remind me why we didn’t just smash the glass?”

“I’m trying  _ not  _ to kill the guards here,” Yaz says, holding the door open for Bill to enter after she replaces the panel on the wall. Bill plops down in the nice chair in front of the computer and boots it up, pulling a flash drive out of her pocket and sticking it in the usb port on the back of the monitor. Yaz moves to the window and looks out at the city, dark with only the street lights dotting the pavement.

“What am I lookin’ for?” Bill asks, face lit up by the bright glow of the screen.

“A folder that’s called —“ Yaz pulls out her phone and brings up the information she was given for the job. She reads out the random string of numbers as Bill types on the computer quickly, fingers moving a mile a minute across the keys.

“Got it,” Bill interrupts, clicking a few times on the mouse. “Right, I’m done.” She pulls the usb stick out of the computer and leans back in the chair. “So are you gonna track her down again?”

Yaz holds her hand out for the usb and Bill raises a brow, not moving. Yaz rolls her eyes and drops her hand. “I dunno, Bill. Probably not.”

“Why?”

Yaz’s stomach feels like it twists in a knot — a short flare of anger but underneath that is guilt, a longing she’s been ignoring for years now. She shrugs and hopes her face doesn’t give away everything going on in her stomach.

“It’s just not a good fit. I’m an  _ actual assassin _ , she’s like a…superhero or something.” Yaz looks around them and huffs. “Can we go now?”

Bill studies her for a long moment before she stands and hands Yaz the usb. She holds the door open and when Yaz walks by she says, “Think y’need to find her, mate.”

* * *

“Great date, I’m glad you didn’t kill anyone,” Bill says when they come to her street. The sun is starting to rise giving the street a sort of pre-morning glow.

“Not a date, Bill,” Yaz says, shoving her hands into her pockets and going to the right as Bill goes to the left.

“I’ll call you for drinks,” Bill calls back. “Bring your girlfriend, yeah?”

Yaz flips her off and ducks into a small, dimly lit alleyway. She cuts through a backyard, walking past a small swing set, the morning dew from the grass making her boots wet. She takes another turn into a different alley and walks behind the buildings until she gets to her own. She doesn’t bother using the fire escape and instead rides the lift up to her floor.

She’s kind of reeling after such a good job. She got exactly what the client wanted and she did it with barely a scratch made. She’s not like going out of her way  _ not _ to hurt people but it’s nice she didn’t have to for once.

So maybe it’s excitement, unused adrenaline coursing through her system that she doesn’t notice the window in the living room slightly open, the wind moving the curtains hanging in front of them. But she does notice the bitter taste in the cup of juice she pours, the first mouthful already swallowed before it dawns on her.

“Oh fuck,” Yaz mumbles, dropping the cup and holding onto the edge of the sink. She quickly pulls open the cabinets, practically bare as she pushes around the spices in a hurry, looking for something to make her throw up whatever she’d just ingested. Her hand grabs the salt and she opens the container, head already swimming by the time she pours half of it in her mouth. The room turns sideways but she’s pretty sure she’s still standing as she wretches into the sink, gripping the metal in her hands.

A knock sounds at her door — but it’s not the normal kind of knock, it’s more of a pounding of a fist. It comes again and Yaz reaches for her knife, hands feeling like jello. The front door opens slowly and two men walk in, both at least twice the size of Yaz. She gets the knife in her hand but it’s shaky and she can barely grip it, her other hand still holding onto the sink for dear life.

“You better not —“ The larger of the two men easily plucks the knife from her hand and she’s still trying to remember when he had even approached when her vision goes dark and she hits the floor.

* * *

Yaz wakes with a pounding headache. The left side of her face throbs and when she tries to move her hand up to touch it she’s met with resistance. Her eyes shoot open and she tries to lift her arms again but they don’t budge, wrists tied together behind her back. She’s in the living room of her flat, facing the couch. Her vision blurs and she shuts her eyes again, grimacing at the throbbing of her head.

A hand lightly taps her cheek. “Oi, wake up. We ain’t got all day,” a man says in front of her. Yaz opens her eyes and he slowly comes into focus, sitting down on the couch in front of her. He’s large and has a short nose that kind of reminds her of a pig. He smiles wide, showing two gold front teeth. “Right, good mornin’, sweetheart.”

“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Yaz says, or well, she  _ tries  _ to say around the gag in her mouth (it’s a bandana she’s pretty sure, and she really doesn’t want to think about where it’s been). Her words are muffled and the man laughs.

“Can’t understand ya, sweetheart,” he says, voice low and gravelly.

Yaz pulls at her bonds and tries to move off the chair when the end of something very pointy and sharp sticks against the side of her neck where her pulse beats hard against the skin. Hot stinking breath ghosts over her ear and the smell almost makes her gag.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a different man says.

Yaz holds her breath and stays statue still until the man pulls back, chuckling under his breath.

“You’re gonna keep quiet when I take this off, right?” he asks, pushing the point harder against her neck. Yaz feels the pinch as the blade pierces skin and a drop of blood slides down the shining metal.

She nods her head as best she can, trying not to move closer to the knife. The man in front of her smiles again and Yaz’s stomach turns.

“Good girl,” the man behind her murmurs, moving the knife from her throat before slipping it under the bandana tied around her head and slicing through it easily. It falls from her mouth and for a moment she almost screams — almost takes her chance right there ( _ because what if she doesn’t get another _ ?) — but she stays quiet.

The man behind her moves around the chair and when he comes into view he’s almost the exact opposite of the man already sitting on the couch. He’s tall and skinny and covered in scars up and down his arms. His posture is terrible and makes his neck look long and giraffe-like as he takes a seat on the couch, tapping the knife against his thigh.

“We just wanna ask you a few questions — for our boss, you understand,” the pig-looking guy says.

“I don’t know anything,” Yaz practically growls, pulling at her wrists again.

Pig Guy laughs. “That’s impressive since you don’t even know what it’s about.”

Yaz stays quiet and tries to figure out how to get out of these bloody restraints. She can feel the utility knife digging into her ass and if she could nudge it out she might be able to get it into her hand, and from there she could cut herself free.  _ After that,  _ well, she doesn’t have a plan other than beat both men to a bloody pulp.

“Listen, Yasmin,” he says. The way he says her name makes her skin crawl and Yaz clenches her jaw to keep from doing something rash like spitting at him. “We’re all business people here, and we just need to talk a little business.”

“I told you, I don’t know any—“

“The Doctor.”

The words stop Yaz in her tracks. Her heart that was just beating hard suddenly stops, dropping to her stomach.

Pig Guy grins, teeth glinting in the low light of the lamp on the end table. “That got your attention.”

“What about it?”

“You took the job,” he says. “And you haven’t completed it yet.”

Yaz tries to think quickly. “I’m working on it,” she says, almost convincingly.

The other man lets out a single harsh bark of laughter that startles Yaz a bit. Pig Guy ignores him.

“Right, but you aren’t,” he says, leaning to the side and picking up a briefcase. He swipes the takeout containers and remotes and various other things off the coffee table, then puts his briefcase on it and clicks it open. He pulls out a manilla file and opens it up, setting it down on the table in front of her.

Inside sits a large glossy picture of Yaz, from across the street, apparently. She’s exiting the tardis after the first time they’d met — when Yaz was still debating if she was really gonna kill the Doctor.

Pig Guy moves that picture and another picture sits there, this time of her and Ryan who leans out the front of the tardis. His expression is hard as he looks at Yaz but there’s a playful smirk on Yaz’s face. The memory sits in the back of her mind, comforting in a way.

_ You gonna kill her? _

And then the Doctor from inside the tardis, sounding so  _ excited  _ that Yaz was here as she tells Ryan to let her inside.

“You travelin’ with him now?” Pig Guy snaps her out of the memory.

Yaz looks back up to him, then says evenly, “I were scopin’ him out.”

“You’re not gettin’ paid to scope him out, you’re gettin’ paid to kill him,” the long neck guy snaps.

“I haven’t gotten paid  _ at all _ ,” Yaz snaps back and immediately she knows the words were the wrong thing to say. The long neck man is off the couch in an instant and has the knife pressed back against her throat as he leans close.

“Listen here, ya little c—“

“Stan,” Pig Guy says but he sounds bored, not even looking at Yaz anymore as  _ Stan  _ digs the knife a little deeper into her skin. Yaz pulls her face back in a grimace at the thick stench of his breath fills her nose.

“Are you gonna kill him, Yasmin?”

Yaz must still be bloody drugged because her mouth almost forms around the word  _ no — no, I don’t think I could at this point, I think if I did it might kill me as well. _

She doesn’t say anything and the knife leaves her neck as Stan leans back, pulling his hand back and slapping her hard across the face. Her skin immediately stings and she keeps her head turned, working her jaw as the copper taste of blood fills her mouth, her tongue running over a split in the middle of her lip. She spits a bit of blood at the floor and looks back at Pig Guy, raising a challenging brow.

“Are you going to kill him, Yasmin?” he repeats, slower this time, like he’s really letting the words register in her brain.

Yaz spits at Stan’s shoes and is almost expecting it when the fist connects with her face, right on her cheekbone. Her head snaps back against the chair painfully but she doesn’t cry out — doesn’t make a noise other than a low grunt. Her face throbs immediately and she breathes deep through clenched teeth, wrists straining against the rope.

A thick hand grabs her chin and forces her head straight. Pig Guy leans down close to her face and Yaz tries to pull back but his grip stays strong, holding her in place.

“You’re gonna kill him, and you’re gonna do it soon. And if you don’t, I’ll come back here and cut off both your hands. Understand?”

Yaz spits the blood pooling in her mouth and it hits the man on the cheek, sliding down in a thick mucousy streak. His eyes flash dangerously as he drops her chin and pulls out a handkerchief, wiping at his cheek before folding it back in his pocket. He nods at Stan who pulls back again and lands a solid punch to the gut. Yaz leans forward, head dropping to her chest as she tries not to throw up. In the dim light of the lamp, yellow beads catch the light, almost turning them gold ( _ amber,  _ if the word would’ve come to her).

_ For good luck. _

Two sets of heavy boots walk to the door. “A week, and then I come for payment. Lotta money ridin’ on this job,” Pig Guy says before the door slams shut behind both of them.

Yaz groans out loud for the first time since she’d woken up — the pain behind her eye has turned to a dull throb and she knows it’s probably gonna be black soon enough. Her stomach starts to ease from making her feel like she’s going to vomit on the floor and she sits up, her wrists and shoulders aching from the strain of leaning forward.

_ For good luck,  _ she thinks, and moves against the chair, both hands behind her ready to catch the knife as it slides out of her pocket. It lands solid in the palm of her hand and she almost cries with relief.

* * *

Cutting the rope is a feat in and of itself, and she doesn’t spare a moment to catch her breath before walking quickly to her room and pulling out a backpack and the box of weapons from under her bed. She packs the bag with essentials — a spare set of clothes, the cash she keeps under a loose floorboard under her dresser, and no less than half the weapons in the box. She shoves her laptop in behind the clothes and zips the bag, pulling on a coat. She slings the bag over her shoulder and leaves out the front door, holding a small hand mirror out to check the hall first before walking towards the stairs. She pulls the hood of her coat up and shoves her hands in her pocket as she leaves the flat building for the last time, already resigned to not come back.

Her mind runs through the list of people she knows that aren’t dead, have hired her for a job, and wouldn’t be put in possible danger if Yaz stayed with them for a bit. It checks off mostly everyone on that list, including her parents and Bill, and it leaves her with one option. One option that isn’t great, but is really the only choice she has if she wants to avoid being homeless and on the run for the rest of her life (that just sounds  _ exhausting _ ).

She goes straight to the Yard, pulling the keys out of her pocket for her ship. She hasn’t started it in a few days as most of the jobs have been local and her heart drops when she doesn’t hear the familiar beep as she presses on the key fob. Dead power source is what first goes through her mind and she tries to remember what she learned about the battery that powers the ship and the energy transformer that sits below it. Not much, which is dismal.

Yaz presses on the button again and the ship's lights flicker on, the familiar beep sounding like music to her ears. She quickly opens the side door and throws her backpack in before climbing in after it. The interior lights flicker on and the screens across the dash come to life. The smell of leather seats and gasoline calms her still racing heart and eases a bit of the anxiety tangled in her stomach that she’d been ignoring since she cut herself out of the rope bonds and left her flat for good.

It’s not hard to find him online — thank god someone came up with a program right after time travel was first invented (cheap and nasty time travel, and Yaz’s version isn’t much better honestly) to find people in the past just by searching through a database. Of course this database isn’t open to the public (technically) and you’d need to hack the server it’s all stored on, but Yaz has been doing that for years, it’s practically muscle memory by now.

Yaz sends the coordinates to her ship's gps system and the engine rumbles to life. The trip doesn’t take long and soon enough she’s landing in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse, the year on the screen reading 2020.

She takes a few long seconds to close her eyes and just  _ breathe _ . She’s alive, she still has both hands — yeah she’s been threatened by two thugs with a mystery “boss” but really, if Yaz couldn’t track the Doctor anymore then neither can those idiots. She slings her bag over her shoulder and jumps down from the side of the ship, shutting the door and locking it behind her. It doesn’t look… _ much  _ different from a car, she supposes.

Ryan’s house (or Ryan and Graham’s house) isn’t too far down the road and she puts the hood up on her coat as she walks through the drizzling streets. She rummages around in her backpack when she gets to their front door and pulls out the pick, shoving it in the lock and letting it turn until the door clicks open. She takes one last look over her shoulder before slipping in the house and shutting it closed behind her with a soft click.

The hall is dark, as is the small room to her left that she peeks in to find a couch pushed against the closest wall, a small table sitting at the end of the room. She moves down the hallway into a compact kitchen with black countertops and appliances. The cool air of the freezer feels like a relief on her heated face, the pain in her eye and cheekbone now a dull throb. There’s more than definitely a bruise, and probably a nice one on her stomach too. She rummages around in the freezer before pulling out a bag of frozen peas and presses it to her eye, letting out a soft sigh. The cool relief comes instantly and she lets her eyes close for a minute.

A clock ticks the seconds on the wall of the kitchen. Yaz looks at the sink where a few dirty plates and a gym shaker bottle sit, then to the stack of mail sitting on the counter. She moves back through the hall and glances up the stairs before going back to the living room.

Pictures hang on the wall in various frames, some obviously older than others and some looking like they were hung yesterday. A woman stands with her arm around Graham, big smiles on both their faces as they lean against the stone wall outside the house. The same woman has her arms around a younger Ryan’s shoulders from behind, her face sticking out over his shoulder. He’s laughing, head tilted back and mouth wide, happy expression on his face. She moves around the perimeter of the room, looking at Ryan with this woman at various stages of his life — starting in what looks to be his early teens to the man she’d met weeks ago. Some of the older pictures feature a toddler and a different woman who holds Ryan, staring down at him with a look of adoration written clear across her face.

The newer frames dot the wall as well, and in them are mostly candid shots or pictures Ryan had shown her posted to his Instagram. Graham holds a large fish-like creature in one of them, and then in the very next picture Ryan holds the large fish-like creature with a grimace on his face. The next is Ryan and the Doctor, her face taking up the bottom right of the frame in a wide grin, mouth open and messy hair sticking out. In another picture it’s obvious the Doctor is attempting to take a selfie of the three of them but all that’s visible is Graham, standing behind them looking confused and backed by a breathtakingly beautiful waterfall, and Ryan midway through a word, eyebrows furrowed as he looks over at the Doctor whose blonde hair is the only part of her that makes an appearance.

She looks…relaxed, in these pictures. She looks softer, somehow, like she’s not had to make hard decisions yet — like she’s not had her trust in Yaz broken in two because of some  _ bad guy _ .

Yaz turns from the pictures and runs her fingers through her hair with her free hand. The bag has watery blood on the thawing peas and Yaz vows to buy them another bag if they want it. She’s about to take a seat on the couch when the front door opens and heavy footsteps move through the hall, stopping at the doorway of the room she’s in.

“Yaz?” Graham asks, sounding proper confused.


	6. I am desperate, if nothing else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a reunion and some gardening and a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, here we are, back again, after a long ass time.

“What are you doin’ here, cockle?” Graham asks, brows furrowed as he takes her in.

Yaz gives a weak, slightly pained smile. “Thought I’d stop by for dinner,” she says lamely.

Graham eyes the bag of frozen peas pressed to her face, then the rest of her (that probably looks like shit as well). “Right,” he says, dropping the mail in a bin near the doorway. “Want a cuppa? Was just about to put the kettle on.” He turns and leaves the room without waiting for an answer and Yaz follows after a beat. She finds him in the kitchen starting the kettle and busying himself with pulling down mugs. “Milk or sugar?” he asks.

“Both,” Yaz says automatically, moving to the other side of the bartop. She sets the bag of peas down and grimaces at the watery blood on the plastic. Her face must look like she’s gotten hit by a truck. “I’ll buy you a new bag,” she says.

Graham looks over at the bag of peas then shakes his head, letting out a chuckle. “Don’t worry about it, Yaz. Those have been in there for almost a year. Ryan doesn’t like peas and I don’t cook much since —” Graham stops, closing his mouth and frowning, not finishing the sentence. He’s silent as he prepares two steaming mugs of tea and puts one in front of her, then leans against the counter behind him and stares at the fridge. It’s covered in pictures and handwritten notes and grocery lists that look like they’ve been there for a while, the paper yellowed and raised at the edges.

“Grace used to do most of the cooking. I’m terrible at it — can really only make sandwiches,” Graham says a little sadly but with a certain fondness in his voice. He takes a sip of tea and picks up a picture of himself, Ryan, the Doctor, and the woman from some of the pictures in the living room. The Doctor isn’t wearing her usual braces and long coat outfit, but instead looks like she’s wearing at least the top half of a suit. A torn and dirty white shirt pokes out of the collar of the dark coat and her hair is mussed and messy as she looks off to the side, pulled close against the other woman, Graham standing behind them and Ryan in the front with his arm stretched out, holding the camera. It looks like it was taken in the living room, the same worn couch in the background.

“Her first day as a woman, she’d said,” Graham says. “She were a right mess that day. Didn’t know her name for most of it.” He puts the picture back on the fridge with a magnet, a sad smile on his face. “That’s the day Grace died. Worst day of my life.”

Yaz looks over at the picture hanging there in front of all the others. “Why keep it hung out in the open, then?”

Graham purses his lips for a second and Yaz thinks he might not answer until he finally says, “I think sometimes you need the reminder, y’know? Sometimes you gotta be put in your place before you start to really appreciate things.” He takes another slow drink and Yaz’s tea is quickly losing steam as she lets it sit on the counter, waiting for Graham to continue. “I didn’t appreciate Grace as much as I should have — as much as I  _ could _ have. I loved her more than anything, don’t get me wrong, but I took her being here every day for granted more than I’d like to admit. This picture reminds me to appreciate things as I have them, even if I’ve messed them up a bit before.”

His words twist something in her stomach and she finally sips at the cooling tea. Graham looks over at her and studies her face, the bruises on her knuckles and blackening skin under her eye, and finally asks the question she knows he’s been holding in.

“What happened to you, Yaz?”

Yaz chuckles darkly, giving a half hearted shrug and taking another drink.

“I’m serious — the Doc just said you’d gone back home and then she wouldn’t talk about it. What happened?”

Yaz closes her eyes, the throbbing in her head like a steady heartbeat — almost a double beat, like the rhythm she felt against her back that morning with the Doctor’s arms wrapped around her, tight and comforting and  _ safe _ .

So maybe it’s that. Maybe she’s tired of running, of feeling like she’s barely stepped out from underneath the falling piano every single day. Maybe she’s tired of the anger and fear and stomach turning thought of what she’s been ordered to do. Maybe she’s so bloody  _ lonely _ without her family (without her  _ fam _ ) that sometimes it feels like she can’t breathe properly, like dirt is filling her lungs as she tries to claw her way out of a grave she dug herself. Maybe it’s because at this point, she doesn’t even know who she is anymore (all she really knows is who she’s not).

Maybe it’s all of that that she tells him the whole story, all at once, in almost one breath.

She feels like a deflating balloon as she talks — slowly the weight that was almost crushing her starts to ease just a bit — and Graham listens intently throughout the entire thing, without saying a word. He listens and lets her speak and when she gets to the part about the hands he looks down like he’s checking to make sure hers are still attached.

He’s quiet for a long moment when she finishes, then he clears his throat and nods. “Right. That’s —”

“I didn’t come for pity,” Yaz interrupts.

Graham gives her a knowing look. “Wouldn’t have offered it to you anyways, Yaz. You’re far too stubborn for it.” He turns and rinses out his now empty mug in the sink. “Are you staying for a while, then?”

Yaz bites her lip and looks down at the half drank mug of cold tea. “I don’t think I can go back,” she says and realizes it’s probably true. She has less than 7 days to kill the Doctor or get the hell out of dodge and live on the run for the rest of her life, and the first place they’d look for her is her flat.

(She hopes all the precautions she took with hidden wire transfers and burner phones to call her parents was really worth it and will help keep them under wraps.)

“Right then. Wanna help me in the garden? Haven’t had a chance to pull weeds in almost two weeks — the Doc has been keepin’ us busy.” Graham walks around the counter and opens the back door, stepping out without waiting for Yaz to answer (he seems to do that a lot).

Yaz dumps the rest of her tea in the sink and follows him out only to have a pair of gardening gloves thrown at her. She catches them easily and listens to him describe the different plants as she kneels on the ground and rips weeds with her bare hands (she isn’t one to be bothered by getting her hands dirty). The soil is cool and moist when she digs her fingers in and she finds that the steady cadence of Graham’s voice and the monotonous movements of pulling at the green stems calms her more than she’d ever have guessed. 

By the end her knees ache and her back is killing her and her hands and jeans are covered in dirt but she feels the cleanest she’s felt in a while.

Graham lets her sleep in Ryan’s room, saying he won’t be back until late and will sleep on the futon in Grace’s study, and “the sheets are clean, just had him wash ‘em”.

“I’ll be in that room if ya’ need me, the door's unlocked,” he says, nodding towards the bedroom at the end of the hall before disappearing into it and shutting the door with a soft click.

Yaz turns and takes in Ryan’s room (it’s the first bedroom she’s been in that hasn’t been her own, or Sonya’s the last time she visited like three years ago). Small trophies line the top of the dresser, along with framed pictures sitting behind them. He’s got clothes hung over a desk chair pushed under a dark blue desk against the wall, and against the opposite wall is a set of cubes being used as a makeshift bookshelf, a large tv sitting on top (with what she assumes is a gaming console underneath. She’s never actually seen one that wasn’t being used for spare parts).

She shuts the door and turns the lock, hearing a comforting click before she starts to undress slowly. She carefully hangs her jacket over the top of the chair and pulls the boot knife out, sliding it under the pillow (like always). Her other knife harnesses are still in the backpack sitting on the bed and she pulls off the t-shirt she’s wearing, leaving her in only a camisole. She toes off her dirty boots at the end of the bed and pulls back the covers, her body already singing at the thought of laying down. She refuses to sleep in Ryan’s bed ass naked and she’s slept in jeans more times than she can count so it’s not the end of the world when she slips under the covers and pulls them up under her chin.

She’s fucking exhausted, holy shit. She’s tired physically and mentally and emotionally and probably even on a cosmic level and her entire body feels like it literally sinks into the mattress (just like that night with the Doctor).

She breathes in, and out, and closes her eyes, feeling like she might be getting back on track — like the last puzzle piece is finally being nudged into place, if even just a little bit.

* * *

There’s a scream trapped in her throat. She can still feel the blade slicing into her skin, hot breath filling her nose and eyes with intent even more malicious than her own staring down at her. The man grins and two of his teeth are missing, black gaps filling them instead. His grin turns to a snarl and he points to the right. Yaz’s eyes follow his hand and she sees something she’s been thinking about for years now — ever since she even  _ started  _ in this business. Her mum lay limp, her dad the same at her side. Blood pools around their bodies in a large puddle and Yaz tears her eyes away from it when she hears the choked scream.

Her sister kneels there, hands tied in front of her as a hooded man roughly pulls her head back. Yaz tries to reach for her but her hands don’t budge and all she can do is look on, stare as the knife goes to her throat.

“You did this,” Sonya says, but her lips move slower than the words. “You did this, Yaz. You didn’t protect us. You put us in danger and then left.”

The scream finally rips its way out of her throat when Sonya slumps to the ground next to her parents, blood running from the cut across her neck. It burns her throat and boils in her chest and she doesn’t stop for a full minute, her lungs burning when she’s done, her head pounding, her heart beating so hard she’s positive it’s going to crawl right through her ribs. Her chin drops to her chest, the men suddenly gone from the room and leaving her alone with her family slumped dead on the floor.

Boots click across the concrete floor but Yaz doesn’t lift her head — she doesn’t have the energy or fight left in her. She’s so  _ tired  _ and now with her family gone, she’s done, she’s got nothing left to fight for. She’s ready for the countless bad decisions she’s made to come flooding back in colossal karmic payback. Two fingers lift her chin until she’s staring into hazel eyes, narrowed as they look down at her with what can only be seen as disgust, pity even.

“See that?” the Doctor practically spits. “How could I trust you to travel with the boys if you let this happen to your own family?”

Yaz opens her mouth to speak; she wants to apologize, to say  _ I’m sorry for the things I’ve done and the things I’ve said and the hurt I’m causing other people  _ but nothing comes out, her lungs deflating like a useless balloon.

“Selfish. Untrustworthy, is more like it.  _ Dangerous _ ,” the Doctor growls. “I should never have trusted you in the first place.”

_ I should never have trusted you in the first place. _

The words bounce around her head, burning on the tip of her tongue as she sits up in bed with a jolt, heart pounding in her chest. She can practically  _ feel  _ the Doctor’s fingers holding her chin up still, her breath hot against her face and a dangerous snarl to her mouth.

_ I should never have trusted you — _

Yaz picks up her phone and checks the time, realizing with start that it’s already morning. She hears noise downstairs; maybe a fridge door opening, Ryan talking and Graham responding. The smell of food hits her and her stomach growls loudly.

She rubs at her eyes then realizes that was a  _ bad idea  _ when her face starts to throb, right where she’d been hit the day before. She groans a bit and touches her fingertips to the slightly puffy part under her eye and hisses in pain when she presses too hard. Her body aches and she feels like she’s been hit by a truck, then backed over once more for good measure.

Yaz rolls out of Ryan’s bed and her hands only shake a bit when she pulls the covers up so it’s sort of neat. She needs to empty her bank account and call her mum, just to make sure she’s okay (the dream rattled her, to say the least). She  _ needs  _ to figure out a plan — a plan that’s better than crashing at the house of two humans in the 21st century. She’s pretty sure the energy trail left by her ship is barely traceable but she needs to figure out where she’s going to stay, where she’s going to  _ live  _ (how the fuck she’s going to get out of this).

Pulling the knife from under the pillow, she slips it into her boot after she shoves her feet in and ties up the laces. She goes to her bag and pulls out the usual thigh and hip harnesses, strapping them on as well and sliding the respective knives in. If she’s going to be on the run from now on there’s no bloody way she’ll go weaponless. There’s a small mirror hanging on the wall next to the door and Yaz looks into it for the first time, almost a bit shocked at the reflection staring back at her.

She definitely looks worse for wear. Her hair is messy and she runs her fingers through it, pulling a band from her wrist and tying it up. A bit of blood is crusted over her split bottom lip and she rubs her tongue over it, then gingerly touches her fingers to the black eye now prominent on her face. It’s a deep shade of purple and a bit swollen but she can still see so she’s not like, blind or anything (at least that’s something). She moves from the mirror without a second look and slips her jacket on, then zips up the bag and pulls that over her shoulders as well. Yaz takes one last look at Ryan’s bedroom — at the pictures and trophies and posters hanging on the wall, feeling a bit like she’s in an older brother's room — then turns the handle and pulls open the door.

She descends the stairs silently, trying to slip out the front door unnoticed by Graham or Ryan, though of course it doesn’t go as planned.

“Y’leaving?”

Yaz freezes, hand on the handle of the door. When she turns she sees Ryan standing at the end of the hall with a dish towel in his hand. She shifts on her feet uncomfortably. “Yeah,” she says, pulling at the backpack straps over her shoulders, the weight comforting on her back. “Think it’d be best, don’t wanna put you guys in danger.” She  _ doesn’t  _ want to put them in danger but she highly doubts the Doctor would ever let that happen, even with her here.

Ryan looks her up and down and nods. “You look like shit,” he says, waiting a beat before cracking a grin at the small smile that makes its way onto Yaz’s face without her permission.

Yaz rolls her eyes. “Thanks.”

“Anytime, mate,” Ryan says, throwing the dish towel at her. She catches it in one hand and he nods towards the kitchen. “Have a cuppa, at least. Graham will be right cross if you leave without sayin’ goodbye.”

“Ryan, I don’t think --”

“Yaz, is that you?” Graham calls from the kitchen. Yaz sighs, the soft spot she’d developed for the older man feeling like a bruise she keeps pressing on.

“Yeah, she’s leavin’ soon. Said she’d stay for a cuppa, though,” Ryan says over his shoulder, eyes trained on Yaz.

Yaz shoots him a look but follows him into the kitchen where Graham is preparing a mug of tea for her.

“Mornin’ Yaz,” Graham says. “Hungry? Ryan and I are making breakfast.”

Yaz eyes the pan he’s currently cooking eggs in and her stomach growls loudly, but she shakes her head. “I’m good, thanks. Just tea. Gotta get on the road soon.”

Graham nods and pulls down another plate from the cabinet, piling eggs on and picking out a piece of bread from the toaster to lay on top. He sets it down on the bartop and nods toward it. “I’ll make you a sandwich before you go, if y’like. I can’t cook much but I  _ can _ put pickles and cheese on bread,” he laughs.

Almost reluctantly Yaz drops her bag on the ground next to the barstool and sits down. Ryan is already digging into his breakfast and he hands her the jam for her toast silently. Graham sets down a cup of tea for her, then leans against the sink and sips at his own.

“Where to next, then?” he asks, voice overly nonchalant as he looks over at her.

Yaz shrugs and takes a bite of her eggs. “Dunno,” she says, because she really  _ doesn’t know.  _ She needs to empty her bank account and send it off to her mum, and then she needs to figure out where ( _ when _ ) to go. She knows she can hide for a while but keeping on the move is probably her best bet for now (or forever). “I’ll figure something out.”

Graham frowns at her but she doesn’t meet his eyes ( _ can’t  _ meet his eyes). She knows how he’s looking at her — like he wants to help but doesn’t want to pry, like she’s his family or something (like he  _ cares _ about her).

(You’d have to torture her more than the day before to get her to admit she cares about him just as much, even if they’ve only known each other for less than a week, technically.)

“You can stay here, if y’like,” he says carefully, his voice measured like he’s trying not to scare off a startled animal.

(Is that what she is? A scared animal backed into a corner, only accepting help because it’s the last option?)

Yaz shakes her head and pushes the food around on her plate with the fork. “Nah, it’s alright. I’ll figure it out, I’ll be fine,” she says, but it sounds more like she’s reassuring herself than the man across from her.

Ryan nudges her with his elbow. “I’ll pull out the futon for you an’ everything, Yaz. Teach you how to play Fallout.”

“Or he’ll let you sleep in his bed, because his nan taught him better manners about how to treat guests.” Graham gives Ryan a stern look and Ryan rolls his eyes.

“Graham, she’s not a guest, she’s Yaz. And besides, I saw her sleep sitting up that one time, so I’m pretty sure she can sleep anywhere.”

“It’s fine, really,” Yaz interrupts. “I’m just gonna find somewhere to park my ship for a bit and —”

The noise pulls all of their attention towards the hall where a choked whir fills the living room. Yaz’s heart beats hard against the front of her ribcage, her hands suddenly a bit sweaty.

“Thought she weren’t coming for another hour,” Ryan says, putting his fork down and tapping on the screen of his phone to check the time.

“Has she ever been on time before?” Graham asks good naturedly, not noticing the way Yaz has slid off the barstool and pulled her bag over her back.

“She was that one time — no wait, she were a week off.”

Yaz awkwardly clears her throat at the doorway of the kitchen. “Right, I’ll just be going then —”

“No, wait Yaz. You don’t have to leave —”

Yaz shakes her head and gives Graham a smile that she hopes doesn’t look as forced as it feels. Her heart beats rapidly in her chest as she takes a backwards step into the hall. “It’s fine, Graham. I’ve gotta get some stuff in order —”

“You can stay if you need to, Yaz,” Ryan says but it falls on deaf ears as Yaz shakes her head again and backs a step further down the hallway.

“It’s fine,” she repeats. “Gotta move my ship. I’ll see you round.” Yaz quickly turns on her heel, ready to break out in a run the last couple feet to the door when she bumps into something solid.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Yaz says when the Doctor tumbles backwards, sonic dropping from her hand. She grabs the front of the Doctor’s shirt with quick reflexes that keep the blonde from stumbling all the way to the ground. The Doctor looks up with wide, surprised eyes.

“Yaz?”

“Sorry, didn’t see you there,” Yaz says awkwardly as the Doctor gets her feet back underneath her and straightens up. Her shirts are bunched at the front and untucked from her pants, showing a bit of pale skin above the top of her trousers. Yaz quickly looks away and picks up her sonic from the floor, handing it to her.

“Yaz,” the Doctor repeats, eyes studying her face closely then glancing over her shoulder where Ryan and Graham probably stand (Yaz can practically feel their eyes boring holes into her back). “Just poppin’ by for a chat?”

Yaz is ready to lie, has it all set up on her tongue too, when Ryan blurts, “She’s on the run.”

So apparently Graham has told Ryan. Perfect.

The Doctor’s eyes snap back to Yaz and she raises her eyebrows just a bit, barely even enough to be noticeable but the move makes the surprise evident. “On the run? From what?”

“I were just leaving, actually,” Yaz says, shooting daggers back at Ryan who puts his hands up defensively. If looks could kill, he’d be a puddle on the floor.

Ryan, for his part, doesn’t look all that scared of her, which is...it’s  _ something _ . It’s something she can’t quite pinpoint because he saw her hurt that man weeks ago, he’s seen exactly what she’s capable of, and he doesn’t avert his eyes even when Yaz looks murderously at him.

It’s something.

“What are you running from?” the Doctor asks.

(What a loaded fucking question, too. It’d be easier to ask what she’s  _ not  _ running from, because that list is quite short.)

Yaz turns back to her. “I’m not —”

“Someone wants to cut off her hands, Doc,” Graham says.

If Yaz could kill them both, she probably would (months ago she probably would have without a second thought).

The Doctor’s brows knit together, the dent between them evident in her confusion and surprise. “Cut off your hands?”

“It’s fine, I’m just gonna lay low for a while, stay in my ship,” Yaz says, then wants to hit herself for even providing  _ that _ information.

The Doctor studies Yaz’s face as she tries to keep it unreadable, hoping her eyes don’t give away the pounding of her chest and the twisting of her stomach (hoping the bruises and split lip and all around mess of her doesn’t give away more than it already has). She looks over Yaz’s shoulder at the boys, then back and nods, like she’s made up her mind on something (on Yaz?). “Right, then. I’ve got a few extra bedrooms in the tardis, should have room for you, long as y’like,” she says, turning on her heel and walking back into the living room.

“Doctor, it’s fine, I’m just gonna stay in my ship —”

The Doctor, halfway in the tardis, looks back at her. “I’ve got the room, Yaz. And she makes great food — sometimes.” The tardis beeps and the Doctor rolls her eyes. “ _ Most _ of the time.”

Graham and Ryan are already following behind the Doctor, disappearing through the blue doors and leaving Yaz alone in the living room.

Two options. A choice. A decision. Stay, or go. Together, or alone.

(Is it really a choice at this point? Does a wounded animal have a choice when gentle hands offer to nurture it back to health?)

_ The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? _

Yaz steps into the tardis.

**Author's Note:**

> as always send ur death threats to @zanthetran on tumblr, tag for this fic is #ass au


End file.
